


The Persistence of Desire

by Margot_le_Faye



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 07:37:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14208321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margot_le_Faye/pseuds/Margot_le_Faye
Summary: In a world ruled by Voldemort, Hermione is Draco's tenderly guarded captive. This will be my longest, most complex DM/HG fic, my favorite of anything I've done in the Potterverse. Hits the ground running as NC-17/MA.  PLEASE SEE WARNING IN INITIAL NOTE BEFORE READING.





	1. The Domestic Life of Lord Death

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ellabelle12 who saved my life by having saved the posted versions of my fics, therefore sparing me the necessity of re-proofing and editing the working copies on my harddrive.
> 
> WARNING: This is unabashedly DARK!FIC: Violence, war, torture, death, angst, non-con. Some real, some not. Despite appearances at times, it does not end in darkness. There will be points during the story where that will be hard to believe.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be a derivative work as that term applies to the rights of JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera with regard to the world and characters created by Ms. Rowling in relation to "Harry Potter". Rather, it is intended as a transformative work which comments upon the original. As such, no infringement is intended. No money is being made from this work. I do retain whatever rights to my story and language are permitted under law.
> 
> Chapter 1 Note: A glimpse into Draco's life as one of the most powerful members of Voldemort's court.

The scent of her skin, something elemental and earthy and delicious, the feel of her soft white flesh, her liquid heat, the sound of body sliding against body, the rustling of silk sheets, the whimpers of reluctance turning to breathy sighs of need. The reluctance is never more than fleeting, a token resistance, a sop to her conscience. He understands that this is her mind’s defense against what she must feel is an ultimate betrayal.  
  
Hermione Granger, who would remain the most powerful witch of her generation if she could only get her hands on a wand, can’t let herself simply enjoy being in bed with the man who is ultimately responsible for the Dark Lord’s final victory and the death or subjugation of all her friends, now, can she? She can’t simply revel in his attention to her body, his devotion to her fulfillment, the skill he lavishes on her, unfailingly bringing her to rapturous completion. She has to punish herself, first. And afterward. Or, let him punish her. He is not at all reluctant. He has his own reasons to punish her.  
  
Punishing, then, the brutal kisses devouring her petal-soft, honey-sweet mouth, punishing the strokes of his manhood into her tight and oh, so flowing-wet heat. He goes hard and deep, sparing her nothing, and she can’t even hope he’ll finish them off and let her be. He never simply pushes the two of them to a blistering peak and leaves her. He wants to force more than pleasure from her, though she isn’t sure what more there can be. He wants to linger in the moment, draw it out. He wants to savor the lush, damp heat. She’s always so sumptuously wet once he’s overcome her reluctance. And he is always so achingly hard, so ravenously hungry for her when she resists.  
  
She always resists. That is something of the point of what they do, here.  
  
But not the entire point. Because he remembers that she didn’t always resist.  
  
She isn’t resisting now, either. They are well past that point. Her lips are open beneath his, drinking him in. Her arms hold him close, nails scraping down his back, breasts pressed against his chest. Her hips are rising to meet his, legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into his arse as she tries to force him even deeper than he already is.  
  
It is all heady and delicious and sweet. Sweeter yet, the breathy moans are becoming coherent words, though babbled incoherently.  _“Please,”_  and  _“yes,”_  and  _“more.”_  He smiles, and shifts his position ever so slightly, hitting the place inside her he knows she likes best. Another wordless cry. And then, sweetest of all, he feels the approach of her climax in the muscles tightening on his rod, and his name spills over her lips in an ecstatic chant: “Draco, Draco,  _Draco!_ ” He closes his eyes, fighting off his own climax as she falls over the edge, her orgasm making her tighten around him even further. It’s taken him years to build up a resistance to that ultimate enticement, but he finds that the pleasure is even greater for them both when he does. So, he rides out her cresting delight, soothes her down, slows to a stop. But he doesn’t withdraw. He does, however, raise himself up on his arms to look down at her. Her own arms have lost their death grip on him and lie at her sides. Her legs, too, have fallen back to the bed. Her brown curls are spread over pillows of yellow silk, her skin is becomingly flushed, her lips kiss-swollen, her brown eyes slumberous. She looks well-shagged, but, by his standards, she isn’t.  
  
The world intrudes once more. He can see it in her eyes.  
  
“You’re a perfect beast, Malfoy,” she says bitterly.  
  
“But I’m  _your_ perfect beast, Granger,” he smirks back at her. “Now, be a good pet and get up on your hands and knees.” This is when he withdraws from her at last, and kneels up over her.  
  
“Bastard,” she hisses, even as she does as commanded.  
  
“I assure you, my parents were married well before my birth,” he says dryly. “No bas--” he doesn’t complete the sentence. It would hurt her immeasurably if he reminded her that there are no bastards here, but remembering why there aren’t would, oddly, hurt him almost as much. That is one punishment he has no desire to inflict upon her. He shakes off past melancholy and returns to present delight.  
  
“You have the most beautiful bum, Granger,” he drawls, taking a moment to run his hand over the ripe globes of the aforementioned body part. “Round, plump and flawless.” He lets his hand move upward over her curves, then leans forward, blanketing her, positioning his cock at her moist entrance once more and whispering in her ear. “Maybe today will be the day that I don’t settle for just your hot quim. Maybe today will be the day that I ream your delectable arse, Granger, and introduce you to the joys of buggery.”  
  
“Shove off, Malfoy,” she snaps. He smiles delightedly.  
  
“I’d rather shove  _in,_  thanks,” he says, demonstrating his sincerity by spearing inside her heat yet again, forcing another gasp of reluctant delight from her. “You’re so bloody tight,” he growls as her muscles clamp around him once more, and he begins to set up another slow, deep rhythm. “That’s the only reason I haven’t buggered you, yet. You’ll be even tighter there, and that just might kill me.”  
  
“’ _A consummation devoutly to be wished,’”_  she snarks, making him chuckle.  
  
“Quoting that Muggle poet again? Shakesteer?”  
  
“Shake _speare,_  you ignorant git.”  
  
“Who the hell cares?” he asks mildly enough. She’s meeting his rhythm, despite her anger. Because of it? He nuzzles into her neck, biting lightly, making her gasp his name again. “The important thing,” he whispers in her ear when he’s kissed his way up from her neck, “isn’t which bloody poet you’re quoting, or which sodding artist’s work is hanging on the walls. It doesn’t matter whose rotting symphony you put on to pass the time when I leave you alone here. What matters, Miss Hermione Granger,” he takes a moment to nibble on the shell of her ear before continuing, “Head Girl, and the cleverest witch of your generation, is that at the moment you are creaming on my cock, and in another few moments you are going to be screaming my name in absolute rapture.”  
  
“You are a complete and utter cur,” she says savagely. “And if you--” He twists his hips just so and plunges deeper. She keens her appreciation and the flow of invective she was about to launch into dies in her throat.  
  
“Of course I’m a cur, darling,” he says as he wraps his arms around her waist and lifts both of them. His actions leave him kneeling upright on the bed, Hermione pulled back against his chest, her legs spread over his, his shaft impaled deeply inside her tight channel. He lets his hands wander down to her hips and begins to lift her, showing her the rhythm he wants her to take. “And you, sweet girl,” he whispers, “are my very own hot and wanton bitch.”  
  
She gasps in outrage. And takes the rhythm he has set. Draco smiles and kisses her neck, running his hands over her body, cupping her soft, full breasts, teasing the sensitive nipples. She writhes on his cock in appreciation and it is he who gasps next.  
  
“You’re so bloody hot,” he tells her. “Going to burn me up.”  
  
“If I could...” she promises.  
  
“Never, beloved,” he moans, pumping his hips, wringing a reciprocal moan from her. “You’ll never hurt me. And not just because you won’t get the chance.” One hand slips from her breasts to her belly to the soft thatch of curls between her thighs, seeking out the little nub of flesh, so rich with nerve endings. His fingers slide over the slick bud and he exerts just the slightest bit of exquisite pressure. Hermione moans again, her head falling back on his shoulder. “At the heart of it, my very own hot and wanton bitch, my own ‘Mione, you want this as much as I do.” He emphasizes his words with a forceful pinch to her clit that has her pitching over the precipice, once more. He holds her body tight to his, her head turned toward him so that he can ravish her mouth, his hips pumping furiously as he joins her, this time, in climax. They are caught in the maelstrom, flesh conjoined, pleasure lashing through them both, binding them ever tighter. In this moment, everything else can be forgotten. Victor and vanquished, pure-blood and Mudblood, Slytherin and Gryffindor. At this moment, none of these matter. They are only Draco and Hermione, male and female, caught in the ancient, primal dance.  
  
The moment passes. The word can only be kept at bay so long. Spent, Draco collapses on his side, pulling Hermione with him. She is already crying.  
  
“Stop it,” he says gruffly. She ignores him, the sobs coming in great, wrenching heaves. “Stop it,” he says again, more forcefully. He has withdrawn, and he turns her around to face him, pulls her closer, running his hand soothingly over the riot of brown curls. “It’s no good, Hermione,” he tells her. “There’s nothing you can do.”  
  
She pulls back to look at him. Her eyes are streaming tears. “How many, today?” she demands. He clenches his jaw, refuses to answer. She gives a savage, mirthless laugh. “So many as that, then?”  
  
“It was a war, Hermione,” he says tiredly. “There are always casualties in a war.”  
  
“Yes, there are,” Hermione says. “But the war has been over for two years, Draco. There ought to be clemency, now. Rebuilding in peacetime. But the Dark Lord insists on making his examples. So. How many today?” Draco pulls away from her, gets out of the bed, and begins to get dressed. Sometimes, afterward, he can distract her. She might weep, but she’ll hush, and fall asleep in his arms. He was rather hoping it would go that way, today. But it hasn’t. This is one of those times--getting less frequent, thank Merlin!--when her sorrow is too close, too present. He doesn’t want to answer, but he’s learned that withholding the information only drags things out.  
  
“Seven,” he tells her, fastening his robes. “There were seven executions today.” He is lying, to spare her. He suspects she knows this. The actual number of executions is much higher. Thankfully, she doesn’t press him for details. The little he tells her is horror enough.  
  
She sits up in the bed, drawing the silk bedclothes around her. He’d picked yellow because the color was flattering with her skin and hair. He loves to look at her stretched out naked on this bed, writhing on yellow sheets, awaiting him. She is not writhing, now. She is trembling.  
  
“How can I bear it?” she says. “Everything I have with you, here? Everything you give me. How can I bear it that I’m living in luxury and warmth and--well, as much security as anyone can have, while  _he_  is torturing and killing people every day?”  
  
“Bloody good thing it isn’t up to you, then, isn’t it?” he says harshly. “Or should I tell the Dark Lord that I’m done punishing my Mudblood pet and he can have you now?”  
  
She shudders. “Won’t you, though? Won’t you get tired of me, eventually?” He stares at her in disbelief. She is sitting in the midst of the rumpled bed, hugging her knees to her chest protectively, her face averted from his as if she is afraid to read what she might find there. Draco is angrier with her than he can remember being since he captured her, the day the war ended. The day he ended the war.   
  
“You stupid, bleeding cow,” he says, enraged. He stalks over to the bed, drags her up and into his arms, kisses her savagely, punishingly, brutally. She moans and clings to him. He breaks the kiss. “I’ve been bloody well tired of you, Granger, for nearly ten years,” he says coldly, glittering silver eyes indicative of just how far she's pushed his temper, this time. “It’ll be another hundred before I’m tired enough to let you go.” Another punishing kiss. Her tongue is tangled with his, her response as forceful as his own. He is tempted to forgo his dinner plans and stay right where he is, demonstrating to her exactly how tired of her he has become. His father, however, would be furious and while he no longer fears the elder Malfoy’s displeasure, he is still not inclined to court it.  
  
When he finally leaves the suite of rooms that serve as Hermione Granger’s very gilded, very inescapable cage, it is quite a bit later than he’d thought. This is not an unusual circumstance, but it is, tonight, an exceedingly inconvenient one. He doesn’t have time for a proper bath, and relies upon a quick flick of his wand and a simple  _Scourgify_  to clean himself up. He dresses quickly, then scrutinizes his appearance in the mirror. After dinner there will be another of the formal court ceremonies Voldemort enjoys making his followers stand through, so Draco is in dress robes with his medals impressively displayed.  
  
He is a decorated war hero, which is why he lives not at Malfoy Manor, but on his own rather lavish estate, Dragon Keep, a reward from the very pleased Dark Lord. The house-elves at the Keep are bound to Draco, himself, rather than to the Malfoy family. He can rest secure that the methods he chooses to use in tormenting his pet Mudblood--tormenting her the only reason why the Dark Lord is content to let her remain his prisoner--are his own secret, not something that might be betrayed to his father. Not that Lucius is without suspicion, but other than one very pointed warning at the start, he has largely left the matter alone. He is far too pleased with Draco to press the issue.   
  
What pleases Lucius is that his son has become one of the most powerful, most feared, most influential men in the wizarding world, and that Draco's status owes almost nothing to Lucius' own, not inconsiderable, influence. The boy rose to power on his merits, by his service, adding further luster to the already illustrious Malfoy name.  
  
Not such a boy, though, not now. The war has seen to that. At twenty, Draco is far from the child he was while a student at Hogwarts, no longer given to malicious pranks or sneering insults. His demeanor is more sober, mature and he is more confident, self-assured. Draco no longer needs the crutch of his father's reputation and influence as he has acquired reputation and influence in his own right. The arrogance is not much abated, but it is no longer a matter of a blustering facade over insecurity. Draco has become a man very easy in his own skin.  
  
Lucius is aware that his son is popularly known as Lord Death, though no one would dare use that title to the face of either Lord Malfoy. Draco is aware of it as well. The sobriquet amuses the former and bores the latter. Neither would claim that it is undeserved.  
  
There are physical changes, as well. Draco’s hair, though still worn far shorter than his father's, is no longer gelled into submission. The silver fringe falls just above his brow, not into his eyes, and the hair at his nape just reaches to the collar of his robes. This gives him the look of an eighteenth century poet of the romantic school, but only to those who do not know what lies beneath so sentimental a facade. He has filled out. His shoulders are broad, his arms heavily muscled. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he does not sit back and lie on his laurels, or do nothing but indulge decadent appetites, now the war is won, the ascendancy of pure-bloods assured and ample fruits of victory there for the taking. He has taken up, instead, some of the more archaic forms of combat, and spends hours each day practicing with weapons that have not been in use in the wizarding world for a dozen generations. But they have not been completely done away with, and he has learned that facility with these ancient weapons can provide other benefits. The dexterity needed to wield a sword can make one that fraction of a second quicker with a wand that can mean the difference between life and death in a duel. Not that he’s received any challenges. He is, at the moment, one of the Dark Lord’s favorites.  
  
He has known, from the first, that such favor is malleable as heated wax. He does not depend upon it.  
  
Draco Malfoy has had to learn rather a lot of things, rather quickly.  
  
The first lesson came precipitously. Just outside the grounds of Hogwarts after the flight from the tower and Dumbledore's fall, Snape hurled a spell not at the Aurors some distance behind, but at their own companions who were just a few meters ahead, enveloping them in an eerie saffron light for the space of a single breath. Draco had no idea what the spell was intended to do, unless it imparted some sort of protection, as the other Death Eaters immediately Apparated away, presumably to the Dark Lord's presence, without turning to fire curses and hexes at the wizard beside him. No sooner had they disappeared, than Snape grabbed Draco's arm, and Disapparated with him, though not, as Draco would have expected, directly into Voldemort’s presence. They arrived, instead, in the dusty parlor of some run-down hovel Merlin alone knew where. Snape had thrown Draco up against the wall, wand held to the boy’s throat as he hissed in Draco’s ear.  
  
“Understand me, boy,” the older wizard said coldly. “We have but a moment. Alecto, Amychus and the others are even now singing your praises to the Dark Lord, convinced that they saw not me, but you, cast the killing curse. He may probe their minds, or my own, as much as he pleases, and find no reason to doubt that version of the tale. It is what happens if he probes  _your_  mind that concerns me, for if he learns that you failed him, and left it to me to kill Dumbledore, you will die in the most gruesome, the most painful manner he can contrive, and his contrivances are many. Lucius might countenance your death, in such a circumstance. Narcissa will not, and there are those to whom she is important enough that they will support her in her...grievance...against our master. I do not wish to see the Death Eaters torn apart by such a matter when we are so close to victory.”  
  
“So, you’re going to kill me here, then?” Draco said dully, almost not caring. “Tell them I died in the duel? Carry my corpse back for Mother to weep over?”  
  
“If I am forced to," the older man snapped. "Merlin’s beard, boy, don’t try my patience.” Snape released Draco and stepped away from him in disgust. “You’re a Slytherin.  _Think_  like one! Narcissa already suspects the Dark Lord intended you to die. Only having you restored to her can avert this particular political crisis. I cannot use the spell on you that I used on the others. It is effective only on those who believe themselves to have observed an action, not the person who is meant to have performed it. We have to lie. And I don’t fancy being caught by the Dark Lord in a lie. Do you?”  
  
“You can’t lie to him!” Draco had given into desperate, bitter laughter at the absurdity of the idea. “He's the greatest Legilimens who ever lived, so my aunt keeps saying. No one can lie to him.”  
  
“ _Everyone_  lies to him," Snape said with an unpleasant smile. “Telling him the truth is much too dangerous. Occlumency, boy. The art in which your Aunt Bellatrix tutored you. You learned your lessons well. But you have to learn them better, have to learn them perfectly, and you have to learn them now. Because if you are too inept too keep your mind closed against our master, then you’re no good to us, and I  _will_  kill you, where you stand.”  
  
“And start that political brawl you’re trying to avoid?” Draco jeered. Snape came forward and cuffed him brutally across the face.   
  
“Think. Like. A.  _Slytherin!”_  the older wizard demanded.   
  
He did then, for Snape had dropped enough hints, and Draco was clever enough to suss out the rest. A moments reflection and he saw it all. That Snape was ruthless enough to kill him, and try to placate Narcissa, pretending Draco had fallen to the Aurors, deflecting her anger from Voldemort. That the older wizard was subtle enough, determined enough, he might succeed. That Draco had the choice, now, of giving in to the despair that had dogged him every day of this past school year and letting Snape kill him, or of proving he could keep his mind locked against any intrusion.  
  
At seventeen, Draco Malfoy made the startling discovery that he was not, in fact, ready to die. The shock of that realization cleared his mind, brought all into focus. He remembered everything he’d ever been taught about Occlumency, and found that he could intuit a great deal more. Seconds later, when Snape probed his mind, there was no slightest chink, no least vulnerability, nothing to betray them.   
  
“Good man,” Snape drawled, lowering his wand. Not ten minutes after they’d left the grounds of Hogwarts, they Apparated once more, to accept the praises due their victory.   
  
Draco has been thinking like a Slytherin--like old Salazar, himself--ever since.  
  
At the moment, he is thinking that his appearance in the formal robes is all his father would wish, and that he is not so very late as all that. He Apparates to his parents home, arriving in the sitting room.  
  
“Not before time, I see,” Lucius Malfoy says dryly. He is standing by the mantle, clad in his own impeccable dress robes displaying his medals--not quite as many as his son--a glass of firewhisky in his hand. Long platinum hair tied neatly with a black velvet ribbon, walking stick to hand, Lucius is every inch the pure-blood aristocrat and powerful Death Eater.  
  
“Not after, either, I believe,” Draco responds giving the slight bow that filial devotion requires.   
  
“Barely,” Lucius drawls, setting the firewhisky aside. “Our guests will be arriving shortly, and I’d hoped to speak with you in some detail before then. Now, I’ll leave it that as you have unaccountably broken off your relationship with the eminently suitable Pansy Parkinson, I have invited another pure-blood family here, in the hopes that you will become better acquainted with the daughter, Abysinthia Langbrey.”  
  
Draco raises a brow. “Marrying me off, already?”  
  
“You’re twenty, a war hero and the sole Malfoy heir,” his father reminds him. “I don’t expect you to marry immediately, but I do expect you to begin to--ah--survey the field. The Langbreys have impeccable connections and the proper lineage. Acquainting yourself with young Abysinthia shouldn’t be unduly burdensome for a wizard of your accomplishments.”  
  
“Merlin save us,” Draco mutters. “I have, I assure you, a more than passing acquaintance with any number of  _eminently suitable_  young pure-blood girls.”  
  
“Yes, I am well aware that a veritable army of witches--I do not say young--have been throwing themselves at you since the war ended,” Lucius says impatiently. “But you are not serious about any of them.”  
  
“Nor like to be,” Draco admits.  
  
“Then there can be no harm in getting to know another one,” Lucius points out.  
  
The Langbreys are then announced, cutting off further conversation. Draco’s mother, magnificent in dress robes of lavender silk, is already greeting them when her husband and son arrive at the parlor. They will enjoy a light supper before the obligatory visit to the Dark Lord’s court. It is, of course, a great privilege for the Langbreys to attend this function with the famous and powerful Malfoys.  
  
Abysinthia is, for a wonder, amazingly beautiful. Her hair is black and thick as sable, her eyes an exquisite and sparkling sapphire blue, precisely matched by her demure, but fetching, velvet robes. She is petite yet curvaceous. And utterly lacking in conversation. Other than Quidditch, her only interests appear to be clothing and jewelry. Draco keeps their conversation focused on the Quidditch World Cup, and things move along comfortably enough. He tells her that the Ministry is on standing orders to allow him into their coveted box whenever he wishes, and asks if she’ll join him there for the match. His father, he knows, is pleased, but he isn’t doing this for Lucius. He will escort Abysinthia around to any events of note in the wizarding world for the next several months with the cold-blooded intention of using her as a smokescreen. At some point in the charade, he will doubtless shag her. It is possible that he will be her first lover, and the inevitable breakup will be deplorably messy. He’s not looking forward to any of it, not even the shagging. It is, however, a necessary evil.  
  
As long as he appears to take an interest in pure-blood girls, carouses with his old school chums, acts the part of the carefree playboy, no one will suspect that his torment of the Mudblood witch, Hermione Granger, is of the most intimate and erotic variety.  
  
His life, he is well aware, depends on maintaining the illusion that he hates her every bit as much as--far more than--they seemed to hate each other while students at Hogwarts. More importantly, her life depends upon it.  
  
And that is why maintaining that illusion is something at which he will not fail.  
  
It has been clear, from the first, what he has needed to do. He hadn’t understood, until later, the real reason why Severus Snape had tried to convince the Dark Lord that Draco had, indeed, been the one to kill Albus Dumbledore. When reports came that Harry Potter and his band of misfits and blood traitors believed that Snape himself had cast the killing curse, Snape bitterly complained that he was getting the blame for the deed without actually having had the pleasure of performing it. Draco had been grateful, and he’d kept his mouth shut.  
  
All the while Dumbledore’s warnings and pleas had echoed in his mind.  
  
He had doubts, doubts he couldn’t afford. Lord Voldemort despised weakness, and if Draco showed the slightest sign of wavering, of hesitating, of questioning the Dark Lord’s will, he’d be burned where he stood, Lucius and Narcissa left to attempt to beget another heir or see the Malfoy line ended for good and all. So, Draco had hardened himself, focused on getting the job done, the job of winning the war.   
  
Naturally, he could not return to Hogwarts for his final year. No matter. The Dark Lord's followers included masters of every art he would have studied at school. Draco learned at the hands of the best, his tuition speeded by immediate application of the theories he was expected to absorb upon first hearing. Failure was not an option. There could be no slacking as there had been at school. Inattention might mean the loss of life or limb. Loss of worse things. The mind. The soul. Nor did he spend the year cooling his heels in the Dark Lord’s lair. There were missions. Some in the Ministry. Some in Muggle London, where he rented a flat. Some in Hogsmeade, where a room above one of the shops had been arranged for him. Twice, he’d needed to penetrate the defenses of Hogwarts, itself. Snape had helped with that. On both occasions, he’d nearly been discovered by that annoying Mudblood bitch, Hermione Granger, only just managing to elude the shirty little swot.   
  
Or so he had long believed.  
  
In some ways, his times at Hogsmeade and London were the hardest. He was alone, those nights, not surrounded by other Death Eaters, not forced to keep his guard up, his mind locked, aware, every moment, that he was playing a part, masking doubts that were growing deeper every day. He was free, simply, to have those doubts, to wonder if there were any way out of the trap he’d found himself in.  
  
He came to regret, rather bitterly, that he hadn’t taken Dumbledore up on the offer of switching sides, faking his own death, disappearing into whatever safety the Order of the Phoenix could provide.  
  
Except, he didn’t really believe the Order could do what it promised. Not at first. He didn’t think those poor high-minded fools had a hope in hell of defeating Lord Voldemort. When it came down to it, there were lines the doomed sods would never cross, lines the Dark Lord crossed so long ago, left so far behind, as to be a memory of a memory, a ghost of a dream. The Order of the Phoenix really did believe that death was preferable to dishonor, that some acts, no matter how noble the reasons for committing them, were so heinous that a victory over the Dark Lord at such a cost was, in effect, a victory for Voldemort himself.  
  
It was that sort of ball-less squeamishness that got a bloke killed, lost a war, lost a world.  
  
Draco couldn’t afford to be squeamish. Voldemort had secured Lucius’ escape from prison. Both of Draco’s parents were in Voldemort’s court. And Voldemort, simply put, was almost as dangerous to his friends as he was to his enemies. The year Draco spent hiding his doubts, his every thought, had forced him to become better, quicker, stronger, more facile with magic, more subtle in what he revealed of himself to those around him.  
  
By the time the final battle came, just outside the wizarding town of Wynchgate, when eighteen-year-old Draco Malfoy stood across the field from the hapless blighters in the Order of the Phoenix, he stood there as one of the most accomplished masters of the Dark Arts in Lord Voldemort’s service.   
  
Lord Voldemort’s orders had been clear. He’d perfected a spell that would undo any minor magics that had been worked upon anyone on the field of battle. Spells to enhance power or speed, to create illusions, would evaporate, as would any other incidental charms. And in that unbinding, the force used to create the initial spells would redound to the Dark Lord, strengthening his own magic, feeding his own power. Those in Voldemort’s service were to keep the others occupied, especially that filthy Mudblood, Granger, who, along with Ron Weasley, was to be captured, rather than killed. Their master was sure he could amuse himself for years, tormenting them for all the trouble they’d caused him.  
  
Which would be nothing to the torments inflicted upon the Boy Who Lived. No one was to engage Harry Potter in battle, other than to distract him while Voldemort worked his spell. Potter was to be left as the Dark Lord’s own prize.  
  
That suited Draco down to the ground. He couldn’t stand Potter anymore than he ever had, but the past year had killed whatever taste he had for tormenting the git. For tormenting anyone. Having to be part of a crowd of leering Death Eaters, looking as if he were enjoying it when the Dark Lord tortured someone to death had made the war all too real. Standing on the field, knowing he was expected to kill, knowing that if he didn’t, he would surely be killed, himself, Draco wished, desperately, that none of this was happening, that he was nothing more than a schoolboy in his senior year at Hogwarts, his most pressing concern how he was going to pass the N.E.W.T.s for which he hadn’t studied.  
  
He was grateful to have been given a position far from the center of the action, on the edges of things, with the older, more experienced wizards surrounding Voldemort. He had, quite coldly, decided that in the thick of battle, he could pull off his deception. He figured he could make a show of firing off some Unforgivables aimed a critical inch or two away from any actual people, counter any curses thrown his way, and hang on until Voldemort lost and he could Apparate the hell out of there to the bolt-hole he’d prepared for himself in Hogsmeade.   
  
Because inept and overly nice in their sensibilities as the Order of the Phoenix were, as hopeless as their cause was if they were forced to fight on Voldemort’s terms, in this final, pitched battle, he knew Voldemort was going to lose.  
  
The past year had, perforce, sharpened more than Draco's spell-casting abilities. He wasn’t nearly as thick as he had been as a schoolboy. His mind had been honed, as well, his wits sharp and quick, his ability to plot his own actions, and foresee the actions of others, as Machiavellian as that of anyone to ever come out of the House of Slytherin. He’d eventually tumbled to the realization that Snape was a blood traitor and that Dumbledore had faked his own death as convincingly as he’d promised to fake Draco’s, in order to prepare a final, shocking, unexpected blow that was sure to result in Voldemort’s defeat.   
  
He should not have been surprised when it turned out that Voldemort had tumbled to it, as well.  
  
It was Snape who got hit by the first curse, polished off with Voldemort’s  _Avada Kedavra_  before he could raise his own wand. The surprise of Dumbledore’s resurrection was not, in fact, a surprise. It had been anticipated, planned for. Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange and two other of Voldemort’s best had been detailed to keep the old wizard too busy to interfere.  
  
There was nothing neat or orderly about the battle that ensued. It was bloody, ugly, dirty. Lines of dueling wizards shifted and ebbed, broke into clumps, coalesced into order once more. In the end, Draco found himself very near the Dark Lord after all, scant yards across the way from Hermione Granger. She’d had a clear shot at Draco. He was bracing to counter it when she unaccountably hesitated, and instead began shouting furious curses at Bellatrix, trying to get Dumbledore free enough to turn his attention to Voldemort. Draco left her to it, aiming a curse in the general direction of the wizard standing next to her, just close enough to burn a sizable hole in Neville Longbottom’s robes without doing any serious damage.  
  
And then the Dark Lord’s promised spell was, at long last, unloosed.  
  
Bindings and charms were stripped away. Minor spells exploded. All of the power used in casting them fed into the vortex of energy building about Voldemort.   
  
And there, on the edge of the battlefield, all the Obliviate charms Hermione Granger had cast on Draco since their sixth year came undone and dozens of memories, searing and bright, tumbled free in his mind.  
  
Draco screamed in rage, loss and despair, blocking the  _Stupefy_  Longbottom had thrown at him, ignoring the git in favor of turning his attention to Granger. One of her hexes had wounded Bellatrix, but despite the noise of battle, of curses being hurled and the cries of the dead and dying, Hermione heard Draco’s scream, turned to him. Draco saw Bellatrix recover, saw her start to bring her own wand up to bear on Hermione, and pointing his own wand at the girl, used ever bit of passionate rage and power he possessed to use a basic spell in a way he wasn’t even sure it could be used. “ _Accio Granger!_ ” he shouted and Hermione Granger screamed as she was pulled across the field of earth separating them, her wand flying out of her hands as she was drawn into Draco’s arms. He clamped one arm firmly around her and Apparated them to Hogsmeade.  
  
She didn’t go quietly, of course. She fought and bit and screamed and scratched and tried desperately to pull free of his grasp.   
  
“Let me go!” she’d shouted. “You wretched filth, let me go!” As soon as he was sure all was secure in the lodging he’d taken, he obliged her, shoving her halfway across the room before throwing an immobilizing charm on her. It didn’t leave her senseless, just kept her from moving. He strode to her and kissed her, once, brutally.   
  
“I remember, you treacherous bitch. And you are going to pay for every bit of it.” The immobilizing charm did not, as it happened, stop her hearing or the sudden, despairing, tears that gathered at her eyes. Tears she refused to let fall.  
  
Draco gave her a second kiss, as brutal as the first, then Apparated back to the battlefield, a man with a mission. He could not afford to be on the losing side of this battle, and it was clear, now, that Voldemort’s cause was not nearly as lost as he’d thought, or that the Order of the Phoenix expected it to be with Snape still on their side and Dumbledore alive. With Snape killed for his treachery and Dumbledore too busy defending his own life to turn the tide of battle, Harry was the only weapon in their favor.  
  
And for all his abilities, Harry was still only a half-trained schoolboy whose previous triumphs had been as much a matter of luck as of skill. That luck had clearly run out. Voldemort’s power vortex was building to a crescendo, it would be only moments more before he directed that power at his enemies.  
  
Knowing the fate of those enemies of Voldemort’s who were captured alive, Draco did what he believed to be the most merciful thing in his power. His first  _Avada Kedavra_  hit Neville Longbottom. The next, Minerva McGonagall. Draco began to lay about him in earnest, firing precise, elegant spells fueled by cold-blooded calculation. A lot of the older, more experienced wizards with whom Voldemort had chosen to surround himself did not fare as well. Eventually, Draco stood side by side with his father, at the heart of the battle. Lucius was deftly holding off the curse Remus Lupin had hurled at him, and Draco went after the other of Harry Potter’s best friends, Ron Weasley. He didn’t dare offer mercy, here. Voldemort’s will on the subject had been made painfully clear to all of them  
  
The history of schoolboy rivalry didn’t matter, now. There were no taunts and no posturing. Just the ugly business of making sure his enemy was down, and wouldn’t be getting up again. Draco fired the Cruciatus, too quickly, too powerfully, for Ron to block.   
  
And then, he made good on the lie he had told the Dark Lord before, and cast  _Avada Kedavra_  on Albus Dumbledore.  
  
In the end, the Boy Who Lived almost didn’t. The Dark Lord blasted the field of his gathered enemies in one great release of power that brought them all to their knees. The war was finally over. Draco felt nothing but disgust for the butchery that followed, but was careful to mask it with a smirk of disdain. Only Ron Weasley and Harry Potter were spared, if living to serve as the Dark Lord’s playthings could be called that.   
  
“And where is their pet Mudblood?” Voldemort demanded, when the battle was over and a reckoning was made.  
  
“She’s my prize, my lord,” Draco said coolly, coming forward, knowing that only boldness would carry him through. His father turned to stare at him, the elder Malfoy’s expression inscrutable.  
  
Voldemort, also, turned and stared at the younger man.  
  
“I have awarded no prizes,” he said.  
  
“Nor do I presume she will remain my prisoner, except by your will,” Draco continued smoothly, with a politic bow. “When you loosed your spell, the Obliviate spells she’d cast on me came undone. I regained the knowledge of certain...humiliations she’d been too terrified to let me remember. I Apparated her out of the battle, and she is under an immobilization charm, until such time as you choose to make disposition of her.”  
  
“And you wish me to dispose her upon yourself, I take it?” There was a hint of amusement in the Dark Lord's voice, but Draco knew better than to trust it. Voldemort could be extremely amused by his actions, and still decide that Draco needed to be taught a lesson best imparted by a series of extended Cruciatus curses.  
  
“That must be as best pleases you, my lord,” Draco lied urbanely, prepared to kill both Hermione and himself rather than turn her over to the all-too-powerful madman in front of him. “You have awarded no prizes. It may be that you will decide none are needed. But if you wish to do so, I can ask for nothing more than to be allowed to subject that Mudblood bitch to torments such as she cannot imagine, for the rest of her life.”  
  
“You speak to me of prizes,” Voldemort said. “And yet, have you not betrayed me, as well? Albus Dumbledore was not as dead as you told me he was.”  
  
“Nor as dead as I believed,” Draco lied, once more. “When the Oblivate spells came undone, I remembered that Snape did not take me directly to you after the battle. He Apparated us somewhere else, subjected me to some sort of memory spell, convinced me that I was the one who had killed Dumbledore.” Draco bowed low. “I am overjoyed, my lord, to have made of that lie a truth.”  
  
“So you have, so you have,” Voldemort allowed. “And you bested both of Harry Potter’s little friends, didn’t you? Ron Weasley suffering under Cruciatus, the Granger bitch removed from the field of battle. Yes, my boy, you do deserve a prize. Perhaps several.” The Dark Lord gazed at him consideringly. “For now, see to the one you’ve claimed. Make sure she is as secure as you believe. I may be forced to reconsider my generosity if she is not exactly where you left her. You will need to bring her to the victory celebrations, of course. Perhaps you can demonstrate to me some of the ways in which she will be suffering.” Draco gave the Dark Lord his most vicious smile.  
  
“It will be my most sincere pleasure,” he promised, bowing again.  
  
“A word with my son, if you permit, my lord?” Lucius Malfoy said coolly. Voldemort waved permission, turning his attention to other matters. Lucius drew Draco aside.  
  
“I hope you know how proud I am of you,” his father said gravely, something fierce and joyous in his gaze such as Draco had never seen before. “No father was ever better served by a son.” Lucius had always been sparing with indications of approval. This accolade was beyond anything Draco had ever hoped to hear from him, an acknowledgment of worthiness such as he’d craved to receive from his father all his life.  
  
Bitter irony that it came too late, when Draco no longer gave a damn whether his father approved of him or not, when the last thing in the world he wanted for this day’s dark deeds was anyone’s approval. Not something he could say, though. Draco nodded his acceptance of his father’s praise and they spoke a few moments longer, before Draco Apparated back to Hogsmeade.   
  
Telling Hermione what he intended was out of the question. Her emotional state was going to be beyond fragile when she realized how completely the Order had been routed, how many of her friends were dead or captured. Tomorrow, he had to present her to Voldemort, who might want to torment her himself. Bile rose in Draco’s throat as he remembered that Voldemort had said he desired a preview of the torments Draco had promised to inflict upon her. His mind was already considering, discarding, reworking a dozen schemes to make it appear that he was torturing Hermione without actually harming her, but he dare not trust her with that knowledge. Distraught and defeated, she would never be a match for the Dark Lord. If Voldemort used Legilimency on her, discovered Draco’s intent, both of them would end up sharing the fates of Harry and Ron. Draco pitied the poor bastards, but he couldn’t do a damned thing for them. At the moment, the only people he wanted to save were himself and Hermione.  
  
Since he couldn’t let her know that, he focused on his anger, giving vent to his rage over what she’d done.  
  
He didn’t immediately undo the charm he’d placed on her. Instead, he informed her, in his coldest, most sneering manner, that her side had lost, and that he was taking her home. He Apparated back to Malfoy Manor, and secured her in the dungeons below ground. Only when she was locked in a cell did he remove the charm he’d placed on her.  
  
“You’re damned fortunate I’m too tired to see to you tonight, bitch,” he’d snarled. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow for you to get what you so richly deserve.” His mouth twisted in a savage parody of a smile. “Be sure to get your beauty sleep tonight, Granger. The Dark Lord has made a special request for your appearance. We don’t want to disappoint him.” Her horror was palpable, and he could see tears gather in her beautiful brown eyes. Tears that, even now, she would not let fall.  
  
“You are the lowest, foulest, most loathsome slime, Malfoy,” she’d said to him, back straight, nose tilted in the air in that trick she had of looking down disdainfully upon even those who towered over her. He wanted nothing more in the world than to catch her up in his arms, kiss her, comfort her, soothe away her fears. Instead, he made himself laugh, made himself say that she’d been happy enough to cover herself in low, foul, loathsome slime back at Hogwarts and it was too bad the slime wasn’t about to lower itself to cover a filthy little Mudblood like her, ever again. Then he’d turned his back on her, whistling jauntily as he left her shivering in the cell.  
  
His mother was in the sitting room above stairs, the strain of waiting to hear news of the day's events evident on her beautiful face, despite the fact that she was immaculately groomed and icily composed. When she saw him, clearly unharmed, striding confidently into the room, Narcissa Malfoy lost the last shred of her rigid self control. She rose from the couch and ran to Draco.  
  
“My son. Oh, my son!” she gasped, throwing her arms around him and bursting into tears. Draco hushed her, assured her that he and his father were both unscathed, and that they’d been part of a brilliant victory. He was devoutly grateful when his father finally Apparated home a few moments later, freeing Draco to plead an exhaustion he was far from feeling, leaving his mother to be comforted by his father, as Draco himself made his escape upstairs to his room.  
  
It was hours before he found sleep. For many reasons.  
  
He’d killed today. Killed people he knew. And he’d turned Ron Weasley over to Voldemort for what he knew would be years of excruciating, unspeakable torture. He despised himself for it, but not nearly as much as he knew he ought to. It had been war, kill or be killed. True, many of his school mates had been able to avoid this battle--of the Hogwarts students, only Ron, Harry, Hermione and for some inexplicable reason, Longbottom, had actually participated. The Death Eaters had had better sense than to let their children anywhere near the conflict. His blood, however, and the Dark Lord’s demands, had forced Draco to take part. His failure to accept Dumbledore’s offer of escape had sealed his fate.  
  
He still believed that he’d had no choice. He was certain those he killed were better off dead than suffering as Voldemort would have ensured they suffered. Had he switched sides in the battle, gone against Voldemort when his memories were returned, he would be as dead as Longbottom, McGonagall and countless others, felled by that power vortex the Dark Lord had called up. Or, worse, awaiting the same kind of attention from Voldemort that Harry and Ron were receiving, with perhaps Hermione sharing the same fate. For his treachery, even his parents might have had to pay, despite Lucius’ unwavering loyalty.  
  
No, he’d never had a choice. Arguably, his choices had been made for him before he was even born.  
  
At all odds, remorse would avail him nothing. Even now, his continued survival was by no means assured. He put aside his pointless, useless guilt and turned his mind to ensuring he and Hermione came out of this with as little damage as possible.  
  
However unhappy with his circumstances Draco was, Hermione had to be in worse case. Confined to the dungeon by a man she believed hated her, on the losing side of a terrible war, she must be desolate, terrified, despairing. In light of what he’d learned--remembered--on the battlefield, part of him felt she deserved every moment of torment she was going to endure tonight. A larger part of him was desperate to comfort her.  
  
Which was likely to be the quickest way to sign a death warrant for both of them.  
  
He ignored his desires. The most important task he had before him was to prepare for what he would do when he had to bring Hermione before Voldemort. He formed ideas, examined them for flaws, discarded them, came up with new schemes. Eventually, he found what would suit, and sent his mind over it, considering and reconsidering the possibility of flaws. He found none, so long as he could maintain his power over the enchantments he would cast. Too much was at stake for him to fail. Still, though the scheme was good enough, it was not complex enough, not subtle, not layered, not Slytherin. Draco considered the proper embellishments.  
  
Only when he was satisfied that he had a plan worthy of his blood and his heritage did he allow himself the luxury of exploring the memories Hermione had robbed from him.


	2. Time Remembered, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following Voldemort's victory, Draco deals with his newly restored memories of how he and Hermione became lovers.

It had started early in their sixth year. Indian summer and an unseasonably warm day. It was late in the afternoon, between the end of classes and the start of dinner, but he was working on a complex potion for advanced coursework with Slughorn, and had gone to his head of House for permission to retrieve some items from Snape's personal store. Though Snape was no longer teaching potions, he was still a master of the subject and continued to maintain the closet where he'd always kept his private supplies. Another had easily been found for Slughorn: there was no lack of closets, cubbyholes, alcoves or secret rooms at Hogwarts.  
  
“You've made a study of the differing effects of dragon scale by breed?" Snape had asked first, making sure that Draco had a proper grasp of the potion he was attempting to brew. They were in a comfortable, library-like room that was a sort of common room for the faculty, where Snape had gone to grade the parchments his first years had turned in on salamanders.  
  
"Yes sir," Draco had replied confidently. "I believe I will achieve the best results with scales from the Bavarian Black Claw"  
  
"You are sure, Mr. Malfoy?" Snape demanded. "The Black Claw and not the Welsh Green?" A student less confident in his own research would have floundered, second guessing himself and deciding to go for the Green. But Draco was very good at potions, and was easily able to defend his choice. Snape nodded approvingly and gave Draco permission to retrieve the dragon scales from his storage cupboard   
  
"There should be no danger of running into Miss Granger,” Snape had added, then. “She was to have collected her own supplies an hour ago.”  
  
"What? Granger never asked you for help!" Draco had laughed. He would have bet that the bossy little Gryffindor would as lief take tea with the Dark Lord as go to Snape for a favor.  
  
"Professor Slughorn directed her to do so, as his own personal stores are not what they were prior to his retirement," Snape said dismissively. "It should make no odds. Miss Granger has most likely retrieved the items she was seeking and gone on her way back to Gryffindor tower, by now.  
  
Draco actually hoped she wasn’t, though. So long as neither Potty nor the Weasel were around, he might get in some quality taunting time if she were still in Snape's cupboard. There was rare sport to be had in getting right up Hermione Granger’s nose. He wisely kept that thought to himself, merely gave Snape a polite farewell and left the professor to reviewing first-year parchments, heading down to the dungeons to retrieve his supplies.  
  
Hermione Granger was not, as it happened, done in the potions closet. Instead, she was on a high rung of a tall ladder, peering at the contents of an upper shelf. It was stuffy in the closet, and she’d folded her school robe neatly and placed it on a lower shelf. Her wand lay, just as neatly, on top of her robe.  
  
So it was that, when he pulled open the door of the potions closet, the full hem of her Muggle dress blew up in the breeze caused by the door’s motion and gave an unprepared Draco Malfoy his first glimpse of Muggle underwear.  
  
She’d given a little squeak of distress as her skirts billowed, which only served to draw his eyes upward. One glance froze him to the spot. Hermione’s hands were full. She couldn’t grab at her skirts to keep them down. For one shocking, glorious moment in time, Draco Malfoy was treated to a view of long, shapely legs leading up to a pertly rounded arse. A narrow lace ribbon circled her hips, a thin bit of silky fabric it was sewn to covering her secrets, but the true glory was the second ribbon, joined to the first, that actually seemed to disappear into the crack of her arse.  
  
The breeze died almost immediately, and her skirt settled modestly about her legs once more. The entire incident had taken no more than an instant  
  
In that instant, Draco’s world tilted on its axis and became something strange and alien and nothing like he understood the world to be. In that instant was changed the course of Draco Malfoy’s life.  
  
“Sodding hell, Granger,” he’d found himself breathing, when he recovered from being gobsmacked. “When did you become a goddess?”  
  
“You nasty little beast,” she’d said in a strangled voice, her face flushed the most becoming shade of pink and her ordinary brown eyes no longer ordinary, but sparkling with golden lights in her anger. “How  _dare_  you look up my dress?”  
  
The dress in question was another Muggle oddity. A strangely appealing oddity. It was made of some soft, gauzy fabric he couldn’t name, in the same creamy color as her--whatever that lovely bit of satin and lace was supposed to be, because there wasn't enough of it to be considered a pair of knickers. The skirt of the dress was bell-shaped, coming midway to Granger’s calves, and there seemed to be several layers to it. The dress had a fitted bodice embroidered with bronze flowers, and thin, wispy straps. It was a simple dress, yet somehow it made Draco realize that annoying know-it-all Hermione Granger, though not pretty in the glamorous sense, the way his mother or a dozen other women and girls he could name were, was yet a beautiful young woman, achingly beautiful, in fact. He realized that she’d asked him a question and got hold of himself to answer.  
  
“Oh, well, it wasn’t as if I planned it," he grinned. "And, if you don’t want a bloke looking up your skirts, you shouldn’t wear those ridiculous things. Why the hell aren’t you in a proper robe?”  
  
“Because it’s unbelievably hot, you stupid prat,” she’d said haughtily before turning her attention back to the potions ingredients in her hands. “Just go away and let me finish what I’m doing.”  
  
“If you think it’s too hot for a robe,” he said, ignoring her instructions to go away, “then, you might at least have worn some proper knickers. What the hell is that thing you’ve got on?” he said, moving forward with a cocky grin for all the world as if he intended to lift her skirts and take a closer look.  
  
“Draco Malfoy!” she’d shrieked, ingredients once more forgotten on the shelves. “Don’t you dare!”  
  
“Well then, tell me.” His grin was getting cockier by the moment. Outraged virtue was a good look on Granger. Her cheeks were flushed a becoming pink, her brown eyes flashed and sparkled, her high, firm breasts--when the hell had she developed such nicely rounded ones?--heaved in indignation, causing the bodice of her lovely, lovely dress to move in the most glorious fashion. She might be a Mudblood and beneath his notice, but she was a damned pretty piece of flesh.  
  
Maybe she deserved just a  _little_  of his notice...  
  
“That is the most shameless thing to say! How dare you!” she seethed.  
  
“Oh, give over, Granger,” he laughed, “it’s not as if I were asking you to take them off and show them to me. Or, you know,” he continued as his voice took on a suggestive, seductive tone, “to take them off.”  
  
“You are,” she said in her frostiest accents, nose tilted in the air, “a perfect beast, Malfoy.” And with that she turned back to the shelf as if she intended to ignore him.  
  
“Hmm,” he drawled wickedly. “So that’s the problem then.”  
  
“That you are still standing here when I’ve asked you to go away? Too right, that’s the problem.”  
  
“No, no, no, Granger. I’m talking about the real problem we’ve got here. You’re upset with me, absolutely furious in fact.”  
  
“That would be because you’re an upsetting, infuriating, loathsome little prat.”  
  
“And yet, that’s not why you’re angry,” he mused. “The real reason your annoyed is that I  _haven’t_  asked you to take off your knickers.” His outrageous comment was met with the predictable gasp of indignation. He found himself laughing up at Hermione Granger, who looked absolutely fetching in a Muggle summer dress on a hot day up a ladder in Snape’s potions closet.  
  
“Go.  _Away._ ” she demanded.  
  
Draco leaned up against the tall shelf, careful not to knock over any bottles, arms folded across his chest.  
  
“Can’t do it. I’m here to pick up some supplies for my advanced coursework in potions. You’re the one who isn’t supposed to be here. Snape expected you to be through an hour ago.”  
  
“An hour ago? I can't have been here that long! What time was it when he sent you down?” she snapped.  
  
Draco told her.  
  
“Oh, bother!” she said crossly, setting down the vials she’d been examining and beginning to climb down the ladder. “How on earth did that much time go by?”  
  
“Oh, don’t rush off on my account,” Draco said cheekily. She didn’t deign to respond, but threw him a scathing look over her shoulder.  
  
“I would do nothing on your account, Malfoy,” she huffed as she came down the rungs. For reasons he couldn’t understand--or didn’t want to think about--Draco found himself compelled to come closer to the ladder as she descended. She turned around at the bottom to find him no more than a step away from her. He became intensely aware of a number of things at once. The faint smell of apples she seemed to carry with her. How very small and delicate she seemed now they were this close. How he could feel the heat coming off her body, making the stifling room that much warmer. That her lips were softest pink, and eminently kissable.  
  
“What do you think you are doing, Malfoy?” she said crossly. “Get out of--”  
  
He had no clue why he did what he did next. He was courting a slap at least, a detention if she informed the professors, a Howler from his father if Lucius Malfoy got wind of his only son consorting with a damned Mudblood...all of which was laughable as compared to what would happen if the Dark Lord realized that one of his newest recruits was on intimate terms with the most despised of his enemies. None of those things seemed in the least important, just then. Draco Malfoy simply decided to act on his realization that Granger’s lips were eminently kissable and pulled the surprised girl into his arms while she was in mid-rant, stopping said rant with a kiss.  
  
His first thought was that her lips were every bit as kissable as they looked, his second was that he should have tried this way of shutting Granger up quite a bit sooner. She was so shocked by his action she didn’t move, at first. And then,  _then,_  for just a moment, she was soft and pliant in his arms and hers were around his neck and she was kissing him back and why hadn’t anyone ever told him how incredibly sweet a girl’s lips could taste, and why weren’t any of the other girls he kissed half as sweet and then she came to her senses, realized it was  _Draco Malfoy_  she was snogging in a potions closet and the arms around his neck pushed him away and he got the slap he had been expecting. He was grinning like an idiot, and perfectly willing to risk another slap. He dipped his head to do so, but the element of surprise was gone and Granger stomped on his instep, breaking his hold on her. He yelped in pain, and hopped a bit on one foot, grabbing the injured one.   
  
Granger was in high dudgeon, calling him a beastly cur as she went flying for her wand, and he knew she was going to hex him into next week. He decided he shouldn’t let her, so he ignored his injury, stepped forward and hauled her back into his arms.  
  
“Granger, Granger, Granger,” he murmured against her neck, nuzzling aside a cluster of brown curls and burying his face against her silky skin. “It was only a  _little_  kiss. Don’t be mad.” He kissed her neck. She gasped and struggled.  
  
“What’s got into you Malfoy? Let me go!”  
  
“Don’t want to,” he confessed, kissing her neck again. “Want to stay right where I am. I rather fancy snogging you for another hour or ten.” His lips moved from her neck up to her ear, and nibbled on the lobe. Surprisingly, she shivered, and went still.  
  
“Let me turn around,” she said quietly. He stopped nibbling on her ear and let her, diving in for another kiss as soon as she was facing him once more. She neither fought him off, nor responded, initially. It was almost as if she were just waiting for him to get it over with. At first. And then came that sweet, sweet moment when she forget who he was and why she shouldn’t let him kiss her, and she was meltingly soft and she gave the tiniest breathy moan and then she kissed him back as eagerly as he was kissing her.  
  
It was too good to last, and it didn’t. She broke the kiss, but she didn’t struggle, simply leaned back in his arms and looked up at him, her expression grave, concerned.  
  
“Look, Malfoy--”  
  
“Draco,” he corrected, snatching another kiss. She allowed it, but only for a moment.  
  
“Look, Draco,” she began again. “I think...I think there’s something going on here.”  
  
“Snogging,” he informed her. “Not enough of it, by the way,” he said, leaning down to her once more.  
  
“Be serious,” she said turning her head aside so the kiss landed on her cheek instead of her lips. Draco made the best of that, kissing up her cheek to her temple while she tried to reason with him. “Doesn’t it strike you as just the slightest bit odd that, after five years of calling me a Mudblood and making life utterly miserable for me and my friends, you’ve suddenly decided I’m attractive and that you absolutely must snog me?”  
  
“Hell yes,” he admitted. “But who knew you had such gorgeous legs, beautiful tits and wonderful knickers?”  
  
That earned him another slap and Granger pulled out of his arms once more, this time getting to her wand before he could stop her. He just knew she was about to hex him into next year for his audacity, but the spell she cast wasn’t one he expected.  
  
“ _Finite Incantatum,_ ” she shouted. She stared at him expectantly, bit her lip as there was no discernible effect. Draco realized what she’d been doing.  
  
“You thought I was under a charm?” he said disbelievingly.  
  
“Of course I thought you were under a charm,” she said in annoyance. “You and I do not like each other in the least. I jolly well  _despise_ you, you prat and don’t tell me the loathing isn’t mutual. You should  _not_  be kissing me. But, at least I know why you did, now.”  
  
“Oh? Enlighten me,” he said, beginning to get annoyed, himself.  
  
“You kissed me because you’re a brainless, hormone driven--hormone driven  _boy,_  who’s never seen a girl’s knickers before, and--”  
  
Draco’s annoyance evaporated as quickly as it had come and he burst out laughing.   
  
“Merlin’s beard, Granger. I’m a Malfoy. I’ve been on intimate terms with girls’ knickers since the third year." Intimate with quite a bit more than that, this past year, though he had enough sense not to voice that thought aloud. Unfortunately, that was all the sense he had. He made the mistake of saying one more thing. "Just didn’t know yours would be so bloody," he favored her with an unabashedly predatory smirk, "indecent.”  
  
Given that Hermione Granger was still holding a wand on him, it wasn’t the smartest thing he could have said.   
  
“Oh! You disgusting-- _Obliviate!”_  
  
Draco blinked at Hermione Granger, who had not, as Snape expected, finished gathering her own potions ingredients. She was staring down her nose at him...despite being several inches shorter than he was. They exchanged insults, and she flounced out of the closet, leaving Draco to retrieve the dragon scales he’d come to find.  
  
But something wasn’t quite right about Hermione’s Obliviate spell. It was as if, though he’d forgotten the details of their encounter, something of it remained with him. In a few days, Draco cornered her alone again, by the lake. There was more snogging. More slapping. Another Obliviate spell. Had she been just a bit less resistant that time? His newly restored memories argued that she had. And she became even less resistant the time after that, in one of the herbology sheds.  
  
These newly restored memories collided with what he’d remembered all along. As their sixth year progressed, so had a lot of other things. His servitude to Voldemort. Her relationship with Ron Weasley. Despite which, she was increasingly more receptive to the advances of one Draco Malfoy, who had somehow developed an instinct for finding her alone.  
  
Also progressing was Draco’s fear and depression, as his plots against Dumbledore, which had never been more than halfhearted, met with failure after failure, while Lord Voldemort’s demands for proof of loyalty grew stronger. A kind of desperation began to infuse Draco’s encounters with Hermione--always, as he thought, a first encounter. His attitude grew less playful, more demanding.   
  
It all came to a head one day when that idiot Crabbe tried to put a lust spell on a fifth year Hufflepuff girl and the damned thing backfired on all of them.  
  
“You bloody incompetent, gormless git,” Draco had yelled at Crabbe, upon finding himself so damned hard he could barely stand. Crabbe was moaning, rolling around on the floor, as were Goyle and one or two of the other boys. Blaise Zabini, equally discomfited, but able to remain standing, still retained his sense of humor.  
  
“Bugger off, Malfoy,” he said cheerfully. “Just head up to the third floor boys’ room and have a wank. Or twelve. Not sure how many it’ll take to end the spell. Still, it’s not like most of us don’t do that all the time, anyway.”  
  
Draco said some highly unflattering things about Zabini’s probable parentage and exactly how useful Crabbe’s arse might be if the other blokes wanted to get the spell to wear off, then stormed away. He was, indeed, headed to the third floor boys’ room which should have been deserted at that hour, when a far more appealing idea occurred to him. It was, actually, an idiotic idea with next to no chance of succeeding, but he was too befuddled by the lust spell to think very clearly, just then.  
  
And, as it happened, it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.  
  
Draco walked back and forth three times outside the Room of Requirement, the room he had discovered last year when Harry had used it for his meetings of "Dumbledore's Army," the room he had been using to try to repair the damaged Vanishing Cabinet that was the key to his plan to prove his allegiance to Voldemort. But rather than requiring it give him the privacy and security he needed to work on that project, he was, at the moment, very badly requiring that it hold a young, altogether beautiful, altogether willing woman.  
  
A moment later he entered the room, shutting the door firmly behind him. A pair of heavy velvet curtains in deep purple stretched from one wall to another, completely hiding the room beyond. He pushed them aside to find Hermione Granger pacing nervously in the middle of the floor before a very large, comfortable and rather charming four-poster bed, wearing a silky piece of nothing that had pretensions to being a nightgown. Hearing the curtains pushed aside, she’d whirled around. She went very still and very pale when she saw who it was who had joined her. Clearly, not the person she was expecting.  
  
“No!” she’d said, and he had seen tears spring into her eyes. “You’re n-not supposed to be here. This is supposed to be for me and the boy I l-l-love.”  
  
The rage those words had caused in him had seemed, to the sixteen-year-old Draco, to come out of nowhere. The eighteen-year-old version understood that it was the suppressed memories that had, unaccountably, not been completely suppressed causing it. His rage was rooted in jealousy, enflamed by lust.  
  
“You filthy little liar,” he’d snarled, taking the two paces that would bring him to her and hauling her into his arms. There had been nothing sweet about the kisses he’d given her, and nothing gentle about the way she’d returned them. The fact that she was crying, even though she was undeniably kissing him back was an oddity he didn’t have time to consider.  
  
But, when he’d tried to move her toward the bed, she’d come to her senses.  
  
“No,” she said. “I  _don’t_  love you. I  _don’t._ ”  
  
“Who the bleeding hell cares,” he growled, ignoring the way her denial increased his rage, and focusing on the desire he felt, instead. “This lust spell makes even  _you_  look like the most beautiful woman in the world, Granger.”  
  
“L-l-lust spell?” He’d tried to kiss her again but she’d got herself free and ran away from him to snatch up her wand. She spun and hurled  _Finite Incantatum_  to break the lust spell he was under. Draco stood there, shaking his head as the effects of the spell Crabbe had put on him were abruptly terminated.  
  
Except that he was still hard as hell. Draco looked at Hermione Granger, who was standing uncertainly in the middle of the room, wearing a scrap of soft pink cloth that floated around her beautiful body like a dream, a tumble of brown curls framing her face and falling halfway down her back.  
  
“Are you...are you all right, then?” she asked hesitantly.  
  
He stared at her. “No,” he said. “I’m not all right, Granger. The lust spell is gone and you’re still the most beautiful woman in the world.” She’d gasped, raised her wand, probably for another Obliviate, but for once he was ready for her, and his shouted “ _Expelliarmus!_ ” sent her wand flying to the other end of the room. He was quickly between her and the wand, and she was immediately thereafter drawn into his arms.  
  
She was crying again, but after a moment’s struggle, she was kissing him back as fiercely as she had before, and this time, he didn’t try to walk her backward to the bed, he simply lifted her in his arms and carried her there.  
  
Because each time with her he believed it was their first, he was always amazed to discover how soft and sweet her lips were, how honeyed her mouth. The scent of apples delighted him, but not nearly as much as the feel of her satiny flesh beneath his fingers, the lush curves beneath his hands. He could no longer blame the lust spell for his urgency, but undeniably, there was urgency. For both of them. He was too intent upon what he was doing to wonder at the strangeness of it all. Or, perhaps there was a deep and hidden part of him, where the locked memories waited to be released, that understood it perfectly.  
  
Draco Malfoy continued to kiss Hermione Granger while he did away with the pink scrap of nothing she was wearing. Once she was free of it, he sat up in the bed, gazing down at her as he slowly pulled off his own robes. The Dark Mark on his arm was hidden by a spell too powerful to be overcome by a simple  _Finite Incantatum,_  so there was no fear he’d reveal his secret to her, the secret he had recently started to wish he didn’t have. At her own nakedness, and at his disrobing, she was blushing and there were still tears, but she wasn’t trying to cover up.  
  
“Merlin, you’re beautiful, Hermione,” he found himself saying reverently. And she was. Not classically so, and not glamorously, they way girls like Daphne Greengrass and Lavender Brown could be. It was an ordinary beauty, the way all young girls are beautiful, but for Draco, that beauty was extraordinary, breathtaking. Hermione was, to him, a perfection of full breasts, rounded hips, long tapering legs. And those curls. Those rioting, untamed brown curls that you didn’t realize, until you got close, glinted with lights that were golden or amber or red, depending on where you looked. And her huge brown eyes, also alive with amber lights. It was wrong, of course. There was something intrinsically wrong with the world when a lowly Mudblood could be more beautiful in his eyes, more appealing, than any girl whose purity of blood could be documented twenty generations back. And yet, so it was. “Why the hell are you so beautiful?” Draco groaned. He’d finally got rid of his encumbering clothing, was kneeling between her spread thighs, and it was incredibly tempting to just stretch out over her, push inside, lose himself in bliss, in Hermione. Somehow, that wasn’t going to be enough. He wanted to touch and taste and explore every unknown inch of her, not realizing that he’d touched and tasted and explored so much of her a dozen times before.  
  
But not as much as he would that night.  
  
He pressed kisses to every part of her body, as her own hands made a fevered exploration of his flesh. Jealousy flared within him as she stroked his aching manhood in exactly the manner he liked, not remembering that it was he himself who had taught her to do so, rather than Ron Weasley. He bent his head to take a hard pink nipple into his mouth, pleased by her whimper of pleasure as she arched into him. He was mad for her, but not yet ready to take her. After a few moments of suckling at her breasts while she stroked him to the point of insanity, he pulled her hands away, and kissed his way down her ribs to her belly and to the sweet secret haven below. Another soft tumble of brown curls. He parted them gently, worshiped what lay within, using his tongue and lips and fingers. Hermione was keening in an agony of arousal, and he moved his tongue more purposefully, seeking out the tiny nub of flesh that governed her passion, circling it gently, at first, then more forcefully. One finger slipped inside her tight heat, forcing the first cry from her. He could feel how primed she was, how ready, but he was, for some reason, absolutely certain that she was a virgin, and he knew he was going to hurt her this first time. He’d wanted to give her pleasure, before. And during. And after. Draco sucked the hard little bud into his mouth and lashed at it with his tongue as his finger probed ever deeper within her. Hermione cried out again, louder, a long sustained wail as her walls began to clench around his finger and her hips began to buck and she came apart in his arms. He was flooded with a feeling of triumph at her utter surrender to what he did to her, the abandon with which she gave herself to the climax he’d brought her to. He continued to lave her clit with his tongue through her orgasm, swirling it in soothing circles until the paroxysms of her release were over and she calmed once more.  
  
It was time now. She was ready. And she was, impossibly, more beautiful in the afterglow of her pleasure than she had been before she’d attained it. There weren’t any words. He simply eased himself back above her, lying between her thighs once more, staring down at her incomparable loveliness.  
  
“Open for me, love,” he found himself saying, and she did, parting her legs that tiny bit farther as he stretched out above her, reached a hand to guide himself to her entrance....  
  
...pushed inside, lost himself in bliss, in Hermione...  
  
He immediately came to the expected barrier, dipped his head to kiss her, pushed gently forward, caught her cry with his own lips, held still until she was calmed, pushed forward once more. Virgin. And perfect. And his.  
  
He did not feel triumphant or arrogant or smug. For once in his life, Draco Malfoy felt the most profound humility and gratitude imaginable, knowing he wasn’t worthy of the prize that had unaccountably fallen to him. He was determined to please her, and forced himself to go slowly, gently, to build her pleasure gradually, once more.  
  
Fortunately for his self-control, it didn’t take long at all. She was liquid heat and innocent desire and she wanted him, it seemed, at least as badly as he wanted her. In a very few minutes she was arching and writhing and moaning beneath him, and within a few minutes more, she was scraping her nails down his back. Not long after that, Draco managed to get his hand between their writhing bodies, his fingers twisting on her clit. She bucked and screamed and came, and that was all it took to set his own orgasm loose. He pumped wildly into her, so forcefully, he was afraid he’d hurt her, but she was kissing him passionately, her mouth opened beneath his, their tongues entangled and he knew that whatever he made her feel, it wasn’t pain.  
  
They’d made love three more times that night. He hadn’t quite got the hang, yet, of lasting past her orgasm, but she was too inexperienced to mind. And, for once, Hermione Granger, mouthy swot of the Gryffindors, was not inclined to speak. The interludes between bouts of lovemaking were quiet, gentle moments for kissing, cuddling, exploring.  
  
And like all good things, they had to come to an end.  
  
“It’ll be curfew soon,” she said quietly.  
  
“Can’t we just stay here the night?” he’d groaned. She gave a wry smile.  
  
“You know we can’t.”  
  
“Yeah. I know,” he sighed. “Can’t say I like it, much, though.” They’d got out of the bed, got dressed, and it was he who did the talking.  
  
“I can’t wait to see the look on Weasley’s face when you tell him you’re leaving him for me,” the sixteen-year-old, hormone driven idiot boy had said as he pulled on his robes.  
  
“Right,” Hermione had said tightly, fastening up her own robes and slipping on her shoes.  
  
“And Potter! Potter will be right pissed about the whole thing, the git.”  
  
“And all your friends will be absolutely thrilled that you’ve decided to date a Mudblood,” she said dryly, snatching up her wand.  
  
“Leave them to me,” he’d snarled, as he led the way through the velvet curtains toward the door, wondering how the hell he was going to get Voldemort to let him keep Hermione.  
  
“Of course,” she’d said following behind him and turning to draw the curtains closed once more.  
  
“Don’t bother with that,” he’d said. “They’re only going to disappear the next time someone needs the room.”  
  
“Right,” she’d said.  
  
“Then again, I don’t know who could possibly need the room more than we will, tomorrow night,” he went on, with a smug grin. And, of course he couldn’t resist snatching one more kiss. Her response was sweet and swift and passionate.  
  
“That’s settled then,” he said with the first real happiness he could remember feeling in months, maybe years.  
  
“It’s settled Draco,” she said gently as she raised her wand. “ _Obliviate!”_  
  
Draco blinked, shaking his head to clear it of the last vestiges of enchantment.  
  
“That’s all right then?” Granger was saying, her voice brittle. “Lust spell dissipated?”  
  
“I...lust spell... Yes. How...”  
  
“I must say I’m surprised you were clever enough to think of this, going to the Room of Requirement, requiring someone who could cure you of the curse, but who couldn’t carry tales to Snape. He’d never take my word over yours.”  
  
“I...Yes. Clever.” He shook his head again. “All right then, Granger. I’ll just be going.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” she’d said nastily. He’d grimaced and left the room, returning to his dormitory where he'd simply fallen into his bed, never realizing just how much time had passed from when he'd gone to get rid of the lust spell and his return to the Slytherin dungeons.  
  
But a line had been crossed. A path had been taken. Though Granger and Weasley were still officially a couple, snogging as regularly as ever, there were hints and whispers along the Hogwarts gossip grapevine of trouble in paradise, something that had started with a missed rendezvous. Meanwhile, Draco was driven more and more often to seek her out.  
  
As his own despair at his bondage to Voldemort and the Death Eaters escalated, his encounters with Hermione became more and more violent.  
  
At some point, he’d managed to charm a floo powder that would break through the Hogwarts defense charms and allow him to travel into the fireplace of Hermione’s dorm room. Another charm ensured that she would be alone when he used it, and would remain so for at least an hour.  
  
She was reading a book, the first time, and she’d stood up, shocked, the book falling to the floor. Her wand was nowhere in sight. He strode over to her and simply picked her up, tossing her onto the bed. What followed was nearly rape.  
  
Nearly.  
  
She was struggling to get out of his grip, but she wasn’t screaming for help. Without her magic, she was no match for his strength, though, and in short order he had her robes to her waist and was thrusting into the honeyed depths of her body. And then she was slamming her hips up to take him deeper, wrapping her legs around his waist, and moaning his name. As ever, once was not enough. They stripped off their robes and shagged several more times before he realized how late it was. Granger was naked as she kissed him good-bye at the fireplace. He stepped in. The last thing he heard before he was pulled away by floo powder was her unerringly aimed “ _Obliviate!”_  
  
He never remembered why he was standing in his fireplace, fully dressed, and always believed he was having some sort of sleep walking episode. He considered going to the infirmary, but decided that it was probably the stress of his obligation to Voldemort, and that the less Madam Pomfrey or anyone else knew about all that, the better.  
  
Each day found him determined to find a floo powder that would take him to Granger’s room. He never questioned why it was Granger he needed to go to. He never questioned why it seemed she was waiting for him, why she came into his arms at once, why the were shagging so quickly, so passionately, they might not even make it to the bed. He never remembered why he shouldn’t let Hermione leave her wand within reach of the fireplace.  
  
Maybe some part of him understood that if he’d failed to do so, he would have had nothing of Hermione at all.  
  
As it was, after their time in the Room of Requirement, he was always bitterly disappointed to find that he wasn’t the first. He would snarl that he was going to make her forget that Ron Weasley had ever touched what, for some irrational reason, he was convinced should have belonged to Draco, alone. The first time he said it, she’d laughed wildly, then begun to weep. Afterwards, she turned it off with what he took for a mocking jest, telling him that he could never be more of a man than her first lover had been.  
  
Only now did he appreciate the irony.   
  
Along the way, he learned about the delights of Muggle undergarments. Each time he saw one, always believing it to be the first time, he would say that if Muggles could invent something as brilliant as the g-string, they couldn’t be half as bad as his father and everyone else kept telling him they were.  
  
But he was never allowed to remember that he’d begun to overcome his prejudices, and because of that, he never got much further than that initial step.  
  
Then had come the desperate battle with Dumbledore, and he had to wonder, would always wonder, if she hadn’t done it, if she’d let him remember, let him come to her with his memories intact, would it have been different? Would he have found the courage to turn his back on Voldemort and the Death Eaters, let the Order fake his death, hide him away? Would she have come with him?  
  
Or, would they both have died that much sooner?  
  
The missions to Hogwarts, when he’d thought he’d eluded her. He hadn’t. He’d found her and he’d raped her, inexplicable behavior even to himself when he’d never offered a woman that kind of violence, never had the least desire to, never needed to, when he was the handsome, wealthy Draco Malfoy, the dream of every pure-blood girl worth her lineage. Or, it had seemed as if he was raping her, what else can you call it when you haul a woman you’ve never said a civil word to into a dark classroom, push her against a wall, yank her robes to her waist and have at her?  
  
Even if she was only crying, and clinging to you, and kissing you as if she were starved for the taste of you the way you were unaccountably starved for the taste of her, not screaming the walls down to get help for some reason utterly beyond your comprehension.  
  
The last time had been just a few weeks before the final battle.  
  
Staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom at Malfoy Manor, Draco struggled to come to terms with the memories that had been returned to him, with his feelings about what had been done to him, and what he had done.  
  
It was nearly dawn before he fell asleep.


	3. Time Remembered, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Present day Draco remembers the immediate aftermath of Voldemort's victory.

No one thought to wake him early. Voldemort’s formal victory celebration wouldn’t begin until later that evening. It was well past noon when one of the house-elves appeared in his bedroom with a breakfast tray sent up by his mother.   
  
Draco went about the mundane and ordinary business of getting up and dressed, all the while he was cold-bloodedly reviewing his plans for presenting Hermione to Voldemort without allowing her to come to real harm. He’d have to lay the groundwork for that as quickly as possible.  
  
However, he could not make his way to the dungeons immediately. His father and mother were both up, as well. He had to give a more detailed recounting of the battle to his mother, and he had to do so with the show of enthusiasm that she would expect from her teenaged son, flush with success. Draco thought he pulled it off. She was looking at him with doting adoration. His father said nothing, but there was a faint curl of approval to his lips. All in all, Draco was pleased with his performance.  
  
Eventually, though, he excused himself, with a remark that he had to see to a final task for the Dark Lord. Lucius understood him to mean Hermione, and waved permission for him to take himself off.  
  
Hermione appeared not to have been able to sleep at all. She was huddled in a corner, her back to a wall. He didn’t bother opening the door to her cell, simply Apparated inside, then hit her with a sleep spell before she had quite realized he was in the room. For the next twenty minutes, he fired a slew of very delicate, very specific charms and curses at her. They were designed to lay dormant until other curses were used. If they succeeded, he would be able to provide a show for the Dark Lord that would ensure he was allowed to keep Hermione as his personal pet.  
  
If they failed, he was hoping he could get a killing curse off on her before he was summarily executed, himself.  
  
They didn’t fail.  
  
Draco dragged Hermione before the Dark Lord by a chain fastened to a heavy leather collar around her neck. Her hands were also chained, her feet shackled. She held herself with as much courage as a woman in such circumstances could, refusing to bend, to cry, to break, even as her gaze fixed on the two pieces of human wreckage in front of them. Draco shoved her to her knees before Voldemort’s new throne, and made his own bow of obeisance.  
  
The bits of wreckage were Ron and Harry, half naked, beaten bloody, and chained to Voldemort’s throne. Draco wasn’t sure either of them were in their right minds. Only one day at Voldemort’s mercy and they already had the look of madness to them. Malfoy gave them only the most perfunctory sneer, as if they warranted notice only as Voldemort’s prizes, not in their own right.  
  
“I’ve brought you the Mudblood, my lord, as you commanded.”  
  
“Ah! And did you remember what else I commanded?” Voldemort said in the sibilant hiss that served as his voice.  
  
“My only thought has been to provide you with a demonstration you will approve,” Draco responded with an evil smirk.  
  
“Excellent. Then prove to me, if you would, that you are worthy of the task of punishing her as she deserves.”  
  
“My very great pleasure,” he purred, and shoved Hermione forward once more, so that she sprawled inelegantly in front of the whole court.  
  
“ _Wingardium Leviosa!”_  he commanded first, so that her body floated in the air at the Dark Lord’s eye level, and was visible to all the court. Another charm twisted her so that she was lying on her back, in midair, the better to display her face to the hungrily watching Voldemort. “I thought of the Cruciatus, of course,” he said musingly. “But she was always such a clever little swot, I decided she deserved something a bit more...complex. Something unique. So, I came up with this one.  _Exsanguino!_ ” he said. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Hermione’s eyes opened wide and her body bent back in a bow as her voice shrilled out of her in a high-pitched scream. Seconds later, a faint hint of pink suffused her, turning to rose, turning to crimson, as every pore in her body appeared to weep blood.  
  
“Oh, brilliant, dear boy, brilliant!” Voldemort purred happily, above Hermione’s continued shrieks. “You must teach me that one.”  
  
“A pleasure, my lord,” Draco said, able to maintain his calm only because he knew the preparatory spell he’d fired earlier meant that she wasn’t actually feeling any pain from this. The appearance of blood was an illusion, her screams and contortions of pain manipulation of a delayed Imperious curse, also cast earlier.   
  
Had he cast his Exsanguino without the prior incantations, her pain and blood would have been all too real. He had known the Dark Lord could not see a spell such as this without wanting to make it his own.  
  
Circling round Hermione, wand pointed at her shuddering form, he kept up the act. Had Voldemort invented the spell, he’d have been bragging about it. The Dark Lord would expect Draco to do the same, and so he did.   
  
“You appreciate the delicacy required, of course, my lord,” he said in a suitably unctuous voice. “It’s all very well if one simply wants one’s enemy to die a painful, lingering death. But if the intent is, rather, to inflict suffering, one must be judicious in the amount of blood one allows to be spilled.”  
  
“True, true,” Voldemort said, with a connoisseur’s appreciation. Draco continued to illuminate the finer points of Hermione’s illusionary suffering. Not a few of the Death Eaters in the audience surrounding them seemed to share Voldemort’s appreciation of Draco’s seeming flair for torture. His Aunt Bellatrix, one of the foremost in the gathered crowd of what he supposed he must call courtiers, was hanging on Draco’s every word, her mouth parted in fevered anticipation, her eyes glittering, her face flush, almost like a woman awaiting her lover. Draco hid his disgust, flicked his wand at Hermione again.  
  
“ _Amelliore!”_  he said. The blood appeared to stop seeping from Hermione’s body and face...except for one spot, where the flow appeared to increase, so that thin ribbons of crimson leaked from Hermione’s eyes, and her shrieks diminished to moans of anguish.  
  
“And, of course, one can ameliorate the effects, target a specific part of the body to exsanguinate. I give you, my lord, the present of Hermione Granger weeping blood.”  
  
“Magnificent,” the Dark Lord breathed. Aunt Bellatrix moaned, rather differently from the way Hermione had. Draco wondered if the old cow might not be having a climax.  
  
He forced his attention back to the matter at hand. He doubted Voldemort would attempt Legilimancy on Hermione while she was being tortured, but if he did, he would find only inchoate pain and terror in her mind. Draco had learned spells subtle enough for that illusion, as well.  
  
Looking around the audience once more, and the Dark Lord himself, Draco judged it was time for one of his most Slytherin embellishments.  
  
“You’ve asked me to teach you the curse, my lord,” he said to Voldemort. “Do you wish to cast it upon her yourself?”  
  
“I should be delighted to do so,” Voldemort said greedily. Draco bowed, approached, showed Voldemort the movement of the wand required with the words. Voldemort waved his wand and shouted “Exsanguino!” Hermione’s howls of pain reached new crescendos, her body contorting in every indication of excruciating pain.   
  
After a few moments, Voldemort returned control of Hermione’s torture to Draco, who continued to demonstrate methods of torment upon her defenseless, floating body. He Scourgified the false blood from her skin and robes, saying that he wanted his lord to be able to appreciate the new blood that would fall. Then he called forth dozens of slender steel needles, causing them to sink, one by one, into different parts of Hermione’s flesh. Each apparent piercing of her body--the needles were in fact retracting into themselves as soon as they came into contact with her flesh--was accompanied by a piercing scream from the seemingly agonized girl, her body contorting in every indication of exquisite suffering.   
  
Voldemort was leaning forward avidly on his throne, Bellatrix was leaning on the support of her husband’s arm. Many others in the audience were similarly attentive to the demonstration.  
  
But not all, Draco realized. His mother, for instance, while affecting an expression of polite interest, had her eyes fixed at some point to the left of Hermione’s floating body. And Lucius Malfoy, though his lips were ever so slightly curled in amusement, was focused not on Hermione, but on his son. There were many others whose neutral expressions could not completely hide that they were ever so slightly uneasy with the bloodletting so publicly performed.  
  
Rot them all, Draco thought bitterly, and went on with his performance. If they hadn’t the stomach for Voldemort’s entertainments, they should have opposed him. Enough supporters deserting his side might have made the difference...  
  
Pointless to think of such things. Dangerous to let his mind wander, now.  
  
Draco made the skin he adored to touch appear to blister and blacken and burn. Hermione’s screams died to whimpers, only to be roused to screams once more as his ever-inventive displays revealed some new refinement of torture with which to amuse the Dark Lord. Eventually, he fired the final prepared curse, and Hermione’s body bowed back as in agony, her face contorted, her mouth a rictus of seeming pain, and she lost all consciousness.  
  
Draco frowned, shot off  _Ennervate,_  pretended disappointment when it had no effect.  
  
“That’s quite all right, my dear boy,” Voldemort said jovially. “You’ve demonstrated that she will endure all the suffering she deserves. I am most content to leave her to your mercies.”  
  
“That is all I could wish,” Draco replied, bowing deeply.  
  
“Truly, all?” Voldemort purred. “I think not. Service such as you have given me is too valuable to go without more, ah!, substantial reward than merely a toy to play with.”   
  
Thus it was that Draco was awarded a property that Voldemort had confiscated from his enemies, a sizable number of galleons, and, as Voldemort was now styling himself “king,” a suitably aristocratic title.   
  
There being no question of taking his new estate in hand that night, Draco returned himself and Hermione to Malfoy Manor as soon as the Dark Lord gave him leave.  
  
He Apparated them both into the cell where he was keeping her, and left her sullied, unconscious form on the filthy floor. He didn’t want her waking, revealing his deception to any of the house-elves who might be ordered to feed her, and might inform his father of her amazingly healthy state. He hoped to secure her in his new estate tomorrow. If Voldemort hadn’t made him the gift of the property, he’d have carried her off to his bolt-hole in Hogsmeade, pending purchase of a suitable place to keep her permanently. Obtaining the keep solved rather a lot of problems.  
  
His mother did not seem to think so. She was distressed both at Draco’s intent to remove himself to his own residence immediately, and his plans to bring Hermione with him.  
  
“I do not see why you bother,” Narcissa had said coolly. “You’ve demonstrated your gifts to the Dark Lord, won his favor. Why not just let him have the girl, himself? There’s no need to continue to—sully yourself, in such a manner.”  
  
“Sully myself?” Draco said dryly. Oh, if she only knew just how thoroughly he intended to  _sully himself_  with his Mudblood prisoner!   
  
“She’s a wretched Muggle-born,” Narcissa said. “Tormenting her is--beneath you.”  
  
“You must allow me to disagree,” he said.  
  
“But--”  
  
“Really, Narcissa,” Lucius interrupted, “these qualms are unlike you. The girl is an enemy. Draco is dealing with her as such. You must allow him his amusements, he’s certainly earned them.” Narcissa gave her husband a hard look.  
  
“If you insist,” she sniffed, and a few moments later, retired for bed, leaving Lucius and Draco alone in the sitting room, sharing a bottle of firewhisky.  
  
No sooner had the door closed behind her, than Lucius raised his wand and called out, “ _Inviolate!_ ” Draco regarded his father with a raised brow.  
  
“I’ve never heard that one,” he said.  
  
“I should imagine not,” Lucius drawled. “You did not, I hope, believe yourself the only Malfoy capable of inventing spells?”  
  
“Certainly not,” Draco said, with perfect truth. “But, what does that one do?”  
  
“Renders the room impervious to spying,” Lucius said calmly. “It has the advantage of being unknown, and therefore it cannot be broken by wizards who have studied ways to circumvent Imperturbable. I’ll teach it to you before you leave, of course. You’ll need it to keep up the game. How did you manage to make it look as if the girl were suffering, by the way?”  
  
Draco went very white.  
  
“If I intended to reveal my son and heir’s folly to Voldemort, it would have been done by now,” Lucius said, sipping his firewhisky.  
  
“I...how did you know?”  
  
Lucius favored him with an unpleasant smile. “I didn’t, for certain, until you confirmed my suspicion.”  
  
“Bloody hell,” Draco swore.  
  
“You may be sure no one else suspected,” Lucius said. “Even your mother was convinced. A most commendable performance. I would expect nothing less of my blood.”  
  
“Thank you, father,” Draco said dryly, tossing back his own drink. “I would still like to know what gave me away. I cannot afford for anyone to harbor the slightest doubt of what I’m doing.”  
  
“No one else did. And, if you go on as you’ve begun, no one else will. Certainly not Voldemort. His appetites are not those of other men. I do not believe he has ever indulged in physical intimacy with a woman. A man for that matter. And that is what this is about, is it not, Draco? Hermione Granger humiliated you as only a schoolboy can be humiliated by a beautiful young lady, and you intend for your revenge upon her to be of the most intimate nature?”  
  
Draco refilled his glass and toasted his father.  
  
“A fair summation,” he allowed, with something less than truth. “You do not object?”  
  
“Why should I?” Lucius asked. “I ordinarily find rape distasteful, lacking in subtlety, in finesse. But the circumstances of war are hardly ordinary. Rape has been a tool of warriors, of conquest, as long as there have  _been_  wars and conquests. As victor in this one, and given the personal nature of her insults toward you, I recognize the appeal such sexual violence will have for you. So long as the only recipient of that violence is the Mudblood, so long as any pureblood with whom you have ado is treated with the gentility befitting her station, I will make no complaint. Your intent, after all, is to torment the Mudblood, if not in quite the way the Dark Lord expects. So long as you do not pollute our blood lines by siring a bastard upon her, it is immaterial to me how you avenge yourself. She will, of course, be subjected to one of the permanent contraceptive spells, first. I have just the thing.”  
  
“Thank you, father,” Draco said politely.  
  
“I will say this,” Lucius went on. “You should be able to sustain the illusion you wish for a few years, but I do not believe you can keep it up forever. Eventually, Voldemort will grow bored with his current toys, and if the girl is still alive, he may choose to reclaim her from you. If you do not care what happens to her, all well and good. Let him have her, but make sure her condition is such that he has no reason to doubt that your treatment of her has been other than he supposes. If you don’t wish her to end in his hands...it might be wise to see that she does not survive long enough for him to remember his interest. He will understand and forgive if she expires after a year or two of your particular attentions.  
  
Draco took that in. The possibility that Voldemort would reclaim Hermione was, of course, a real danger. But, he was confident that he could find a way to avoid even that. He had years, he was sure, to plan for the contingency, after all.  
  
“You’ve still not explained how you knew what I was about,” Draco said, “or why you are so sure no one else guessed.”  
  
“The simplest answer, of course. You are my own son. I know you as no one else does, save your mother. And as a man, I have insights into your behavior even she cannot claim.”  
  
“Ah,” Draco said, as the mystery was explained.  
  
“Perhaps Severus Snape might have discerned what you were about,” Lucius mused. “He was head of your House for six years, and must’ve come to know you fairly well. And, his mind was never anything but first rate. But short of that...no, I truly believe there is no one who will ever guess.”  
  
“You may depend upon it,” Draco assured his father.  
  
“Indeed,” Lucius acknowledged the implicit promise of discretion and vigilance. He expected nothing less of his son. “Now, let me teach you the Inviolate spell, and we can discuss how you plan to keep up your charade.”  
  
So it was that Draco’s own father helped him perfect and refine the plans he had for keeping Hermione Granger in the manner to which he intended her to become accustomed.  
  
Most of it was ridiculously easy. The first test, at Lucius’ insistence, was of the house-elves at Draco’s new holding. Draco was hardly named in the previous owner’s will, so there was a question of legality. However, the Dark Lord’s triumph in battle and assumption of power was sufficient to make his will law. When Draco ordered one of the house-elves to hang itself, it promptly did so. Draco cut it down before real harm was done, and Lucius pronounced himself satisfied that the little beasts would provide his son adequate service.  
  
"Excellent," Draco said. "I'll have them begin to move my effects in immediately. I would like to take up residence by nightfall."  
  
"I cannot recommend that course of action," his father said thoughtfully. "You will want to put your own stamp on the place, and that is most easily done while you are living comfortably in your own rooms at the manor." Lucius went on to outline the steps he believed Draco would need to take in order to make the keep his own, and the younger man reluctantly agreed that his father had a point. He resigned himself to spending weeks, if not months, renovating his new property...and, Slytherin that he was, how to turn this to his advantage in his continuing effort to deceive Voldemort as to his true plans for Hermione.  
  
Naturally, Lord Death was an object of particular interest to the pure-blood winners of the war. News of his least doings were reported in the gossip columns of the  _Daily Prophet , Witch Weekly_  and the  _Elegant Enchantress_  with great regularity. Even his shopping expeditions were cause for comment. No one was surprised that the new owner of Melchart Keep, would want to refurbish it to reflect his own tastes, rather than those of the former owners. Together, father and son toured the property. It had been in the possession of the Melchart family from its founding in the eleventh century until the last living member, old Barnabas Melchart, had thrown in his lot with the Order of the Phoenix, and died with so many others on Wynchgate Field. The property would be renamed Dragon Keep, effacing the name and memory of the Melcharts, and solidifying Draco’s position. Draco decided which of the handsome antiques it held he wanted to retain, and which could be carted off to storage. He then made arrangements for additional furnishings, more modern pieces that would be just the thing for a bachelor’s domicile.  
  
Renovating the dungeons was a more complex matter. He couldn’t even permit his father to help.  
  
Dragon Keep had been built in Norman times. All such medieval wizarding estates had dungeons. The Melcharts, seemingly, had had no use for theirs for a number of generations, as they had been turned into storerooms packed thick with discarded furnishings, trunks of old clothing, broken bric-a-brac and other memorabilia. Most of it was carted off to the attics, allowing Draco to complain to a few of his friends about the tediousness of having to restore the dungeons to working order. New shackles, chains and other curious implements were purchased from Borgin and Burkes, news of which, when inevitably reported in the  _Daily Prophet,_  caused a ripple of titillated gossip and speculation throughout society. The intelligence that these items were consigned to one of the secret storerooms without which no ancient keep would be complete was not known to anyone but Draco and the oldest, most discrete and least talkative of the house-elves, one Frimble.  
  
With the wizarding world--and Lord Voldemort--convinced that the dungeons had been returned to their original purpose, the real dungeon renovation could begin.  
  
A true Norman construction, Dragon Keep was a single tall circular tower. The danger of it being laid siege having been thought to be past for some centuries, it did not sit behind a moat, but within a clearing about which the original forest had been allowed to regrow. Draco appreciated the privacy the wood afforded. It would help with his own plans.  
  
Draco stood within the great hall on the first floor of the keep, and began to work magic.  
  
With a groan and a creak, the ancient stone walls started to reorganize themselves, pulling apart and reforming about what was now a sizable shaft of space within the core of the structure. In this space, he caused to spring up a magnificent garden, complete with a large marble fountain in the center of a pond full of koi and lotus plants, and some lovely wrought iron lawn furnishings. The dungeon in which he was supposed to be keeping Hermione was by the outermost wall of the keep, nowhere near this central core.   
  
Anyone who happened to be flying over the castle and chanced to look down would suspect nothing other than that Lord Death liked to spend time in a garden, and that he didn’t wish to be inconvenienced by the weather. A glass roof was going to be put into place atop the keep, one that could be magically opened or closed, depending upon the weather, and beneath which Draco could work charms so as to have a sunny day in the garden even in the midst of a winter storm. Of course, whenever Hermione chose to enjoy the garden, concealment spells would ensure that she could not be detected there.  
  
The process of refitting Dragon Keep to suit Draco’s needs moved along apace, and within a very few weeks, all was ready. He’d kept Hermione in a state of petrification, since the night he’d removed her from Lord Voldemort’s presence. In such a state, her body could sustain itself without food or drink, and her mind was sunk beneath waves of blessed oblivion, where she would not fret about the fates of her friends, or worry about her own. It was altogether easier that way.  
  
At last things were prepared to his satisfaction. Draco arranged for his belongings to be shipped from Malfoy Manor to his new home, and went off to bid his parents farewell. His mother offered her cheek for his kiss and told him she expected him for dinner at the end of the week. His father suggested they go to his study to go over a few matters of business. Draco raised a brow, but agreed, and they left Narcissa to peruse the latest issue of  _The Elegant Enchantress_  which had just been delivered by Owl post.  
  
“What sort of business did you wish to discuss?” Draco said as he followed his father to the study.  
  
“As no doubt you’ve realized, it is the sort that is best kept from your mother. I had promised that I would perform the contraceptive curse on your pet.”  
  
Draco looked at his father in surprise. “I thought you’d have done that by now. She’s been in the dungeons for weeks.”  
  
“And she’s been petrified, the entire time. The particular curse I have in mind, one of the most reliable ones known, cannot be done while she is thus indisposed.”  
  
“I see,” Draco frowned. He’d actually hoped to keep Hermione unconscious until they were at Dragon Keep, but that was clearly not an option. Masking his uneasiness, he followed his father to the dungeon.  
  
At first, things went smoothly enough. Hermione had the blistered and blackened appearance that he’d made her assume before Voldemort. His father dryly suggested that, as Draco had been keeping the room under the Inviolate spell, they might dispense with the illusion. Draco nodded, cast the appropriate counter-spells to disperse the glamour she had been under, and, finally, to wake her up.  
  
She roused slowly, blinking to find herself sprawled on a heap of straw on the floor of a dank dungeon.   
  
Then she saw the two men standing above her and scrambled to her feet. Her appearance, given all that she’d gone through, could not be less than disheveled, but she drew herself up straight with regal dignity.  
  
“I suppose it is time for me to be brought before that wretched madman you serve?”  
  
“You might find a silencing spell advisable,” Lucius drawled to his son, ignoring her as beneath his notice. “I cannot imagine you captured the chit to hear her speak.”  
  
Hermione grew crimson with indignation, but retained enough sense not to try to attack him. Draco favored her with a smirk, though privately, he was glad to see that her memories of what he’d done to her before Voldemort had not yet returned.  
  
“I imagine there are quite a number of interesting spells I can subject her to once I get her back to Dragon Keep,” Draco told his father, speaking as if Hermione weren’t even there. “Shall we get on with it?”  
  
Lucius nodded, waved his wand it in a complex pattern while pointing it toward Hermione, and ended with the incantation, “ _Non Fructus!_ ” An oily black light emerged from the tip of his wand and enveloped the girl for a moment, before seeming to sink into her belly and disappearing.   
  
Hermione regarded the older wizard warily, but had no other noticeable reaction to the spell she'd been subjected to. Lucius smirked and turned to Draco.  
  
“Simple enough, as you can see. Nor does it require renewing as it is chiefly intended for those who have finished--”  
  
Hermione’s low moan of pain interrupted them. Draco turned to see that she’d gone white, and doubled over clutching her midsection. A moment later, a gush of scarlet blood flowed down her legs as she screamed aloud and collapsed back to the straw on the floor.  
  
Shock held Draco still for one moment while his father snarled a curse and Disapparated. Draco rushed to Hermione’s side, tried to lift her in his arms.  
  
“What’s wrong?” he said frantically.  
  
“Make it stop,” she moaned pathetically. “Please, please...”  
  
But he couldn’t make it stop. He spent the next few minutes trying every spell he’d ever heard of for the relief of pain, but they weren’t working.  
  
A loud popping sound heralded the return of the elder Malfoy. Draco saw he was not alone.  
  
“Can your house-elves bring a cot in here?” the Healer said bracingly as she moved forward to Hermione’s other side. “It will make the examination easier.”  
  
“I’ve no wish to get her dirty blood on one of my cots,” Lucius sneered.  
  
The Healer shrugged. “As you wish,” she said and began to push the hysterically crying Hermione’s robes up to her ribs. “If you will be so kind as to hold her still, Lord Malfoy.” Draco blinked, then remembered that as of the day following the battle, by Voldemort’s decree, he and his father were both lords. Lucius had told his son privately that he’d always felt the name Malfoy was title enough for any man, but of course even he didn’t dare say that to Voldemort’s face. They had, perforce, accepted the titles with the show of gratitude expected of them.  
  
Draco held Hermione still as she sobbed and screamed and the Healer dispassionately said that it was rather fortunate that the fetus was only a few weeks along, and the contraceptive curse had been expertly cast, ensuring a complete abortion of what would, she noted after a brief wave of her wand at the bloody mess she levitated away from Hermione’s body and onto a pile of straw, have been a baby boy. The girl would be undamaged internally.  
  
“Provided she takes no infection,” the Healer went on. “You might want to rethink the idea of a cot. Clean rags ought to keep it free of contamination.”  
  
“Can she be Apparated?” Draco said, fighting to keep his tone neutral and his expression bored. “I had planned to move today, and it would be inconvenient to leave her with my father.” It was killing him to let Hermione continue to sob and moan in pain without being able to comfort her, but he didn’t dare let either his father or the Healer guess that she meant more to him than simply a despised Mudblood slave to torment.  
  
“Side-along Apparition, you mean? Well, it will be uncomfortable for her, but will do no lasting damage,”’ the Healer decided. “If you don’t mind her suffering a bit of pain, then you may do as you will as soon as I have finished here.”  
  
It seemed forever before the callous bitch was through with her ungentle ministrations to the stricken girl. “If she were a pure-blood,” the Healer told them conversationally as she went about her business. “I’d recommend complete bed rest for a few days, a light diet, no strenuous exercise, and no sexual activity until she’d been given the appropriate restorative potion. Since this creature doesn’t warrant such consideration, you may suit yourself in these matters, though intercourse in the next few days might risk infection.”  
  
Draco didn’t trust himself to speak. Lucius had no such compunction.  
  
“Her ability to indulge in such activities is hardly a concern,” he drawled. “The Non Fructus curse was done as a precaution against any of Harry Potter’s get coming into the world.”  
  
“Well! Good thing that you used it,” the Healer congratulated them. “We’ve certainly had enough of  _that_  sort of half-breed vermin.”  
  
Finished with her work, she stood, muttered a perfunctory healing incantation over Hermione, then aimed her wand at the sad little heap of bloody straw. Another terse incantation and Draco’s son was blasted into ash. He clenched his jaw but said nothing. Hermione sobs of pain had given way to a horrified, keening wail. The Healer sniffed in disdain. Lucius thanked her for her assistance and asked her to return with him to his study for a glass of brandy and to discuss the fees for her services. They Disapparated, leaving Draco alone with Hermione.  
  
Draco held her, but this was the wrong time and place to offer the comfort she needed. He was damned if he’d let her suffer more than was needful, so he used a spell to render he unconscious once more before lifting her in his arms to Apparate them back to her waiting chambers in Dragon Keep.  
  
Several hours later, he watched from his position on a loveseat in her apartments as Hermione gradually came awake. She stirred uneasily on the large bed, blinked a few times, a frown marring her features as she struggled to make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings. She would not, of course, recognize the large, soft bed with its luxurious Egyptian cotton sheets, or the light, airy room in which she found herself. And it would be nearly impossible to reconcile those surroundings with her most recent memories.  
  
But she would certainly make the attempt. He watched as her eyes became more focused, the frown smoothed away, and she slowly sat up in the wide bed. She winced in pain, and he got up from the loveseat and slowly approached her bedside.  
  
“Are you all right?” he asked quietly.  
  
“I...Dra--Malfoy,” she corrected herself, blinking at him. He could tell the exact moment when her memories came clear. Her eyes snapped to his, her features hardened, and she drew the covers over her chest. Not that she was naked. He’d dressed her in one of his old robes, something that he’d long outgrown but which would fit her well enough, once he’d finished cleaning her in the shower while she remained unconscious.   
  
“Have we moved on to mental torture so soon?” she said coldly.  
  
“I don’t mean to torture you at all, Hermione,” he said tiredly. “You’re smart enough to understand the necessity for the act I’ve had to put on.”  
  
“Too smart to be taken in by the one you’re trying to put on now, you mean,” she’d replied.  
  
“Bloody stupid if you think that,” he said impatiently, reaching for a blue bottle waiting by her bedside and pouring it into the glass beside it. “Drink this. I can only hope it restores your common sense as well as your body.” Hours earlier, Draco had only just tucked Hermione into bed when his house-elf, Frimble, appeared to announce the arrival of Master’s esteemed father, who was waiting in the study. Lucius had tossed him the bottle, told him it contained the restorative potion the Healer had said would be needed to complete Hermione’s recovery, and added the intelligence that he had modified the Healer’s memory, so that she believed she’d treated Lucius himself for some battle injuries that had been aggravated by his indulgence in recent, unspecified, strenuous activities. Draco had thanked his father, endured some ribald speculation on whether it had been Harry or Ron who'd fathered the dead child, received another warning about the necessity for discretion, and watched as his father Disapparated back to the Manor. Draco had taken himself back to Hermione’s bedside, settling into the loveseat, watching her sleep. She couldn’t take the healing potion until she woke up, but he wasn’t in a hurry to wake her. Sleep was restorative, and the potion would be most effective if she’d first begun to heal on her own. But from the way Hermione eyed it, Draco wondered if she would refuse to take the blasted thing.  
  
“Unless you want me to use Imperious,” he warned her, “you’ll drink it up without a fuss.” She glared at him, but recognized that there really was no choice. Whether she drank it herself, or forced him to take control of her body, the potion was going to end up inside her. She nodded curtly and accepted the glass, obediently drinking it down. Draco sighed in relief. “Better?” he asked. She gave him another curt nod and handed back the glass. Draco set it back on her nightstand and returned to his armchair.  
  
“You’ll have questions. You might as well ask them. The sooner you understand, the sooner we can get on with things.”  
  
She arched a brow.  
  
“What sort of things are we meant to be getting on with?” she asked coolly. He threw her a contemptuous look.  
  
“Playing the fool doesn’t suit you, Granger,” he said harshly. “I know you remember what happened at Wynchgate Field, and some of what I had to put you through before Voldemort. Ask your questions so we can get on with building whatever sort of life we can have now.”  
  
_“Whatever sort of life?”_  she repeated with a shudder. “Not much of one, I should think.”  
  
“Don’t underestimate my ability to protect you,” he said. She surprised him by laughing, albeit without any humor.  
  
“Oh, it isn’t your ability I doubt, Malfoy. All of this rather argues that I will be most comfortably imprisoned,” she waved her hand at the room which had been appointed with furnishings of handsome, well-carved woods gleaming with polish, a thick carpet in warm earth tones, and matching draperies of heavy silk. “For as long as you wish. It’s your desire to keep me protected that’s at issue.”  
  
“No, it isn’t. My desire on the subject is immutable.”  
  
“Forgive me if the memory of being forced to weep blood for Voldemort makes it impossible for me to credit that.”  
  
“You didn’t weep blood,” he pointed out. “It was an illusion.”  
  
“So long as he believed the illusion, what difference?”  
  
Draco ran his hand irritably through his hair.  
  
“Merlin’s nuts, Hermione, there is the difference between being made to counterfeit agony, and actually being subjected to it.”  
  
“You forced me to give him pleasure,” she whispered. “You forced your will on my mind, and you used my body as a canvas on which to paint entertainments for that bastard while my two best friends bled at his feet.”  
  
“Hermione...” Draco sighed. “You’re side lost the war. He wanted you himself. And then you would have been bleeding at his feet right along with Harry and Ron.”  
  
She raised her chin, eyes flashing.  
  
“I’m not afraid to die for what I believe in, not when what I fight for is worth dying to protect. The Order may have fallen, but it will return. There will be others to take our places, and while I don’t rely upon rescue for myself or my friends, there will be someone, somewhere, to  _try_  to rescue us. Voldemort is a tyrant. It’s only a matter of time before more people grow discontent and rise to overthrow him once more.” Draco wasn’t sure whether he wanted to grab her and kiss her for her indomitable spirit, or slap her senseless for her stupidity.   
  
“You can’t possibly be that naive,” he finally said.  
  
“I’m not. History shows that all tyrants overreach themselves, eventually,” she said in exactly the same pompous, swotty manner she’d had when she’d explained some difficult problem no one else had grasped in their classes at Hogwarts.   
  
“Fine,” he said rolling his eyes. “Well, while you’re waiting for him to overreach himself, let’s get you settled in here, shall we?”  
  
“Why?” she said. He blinked at her.  
  
“What d’ye mean,  _why?_ ”  
  
“Why do you wish me to settle in here? Why any of this? It isn’t exactly as if there’s any love lost between us, is there?”  
  
Draco went very still, glaring at her.   
  
“Filthy little liar,” he said softly, as he had once before, and with every bit as much anger, taking great satisfaction in the way she blanched at his words, as if he'd slapped her. “That is exactly what has been lost between us, what you caused us to lose with your damned memory charms.”  
  
“Love?” she said, rallying giving another bitter laugh. “Rutting with me every chance you got just because you’d caught a glimpse of my knickers?”  
  
Draco favored her with a sardonic smile.  
  
“Right. As you were just rutting with me. That’s why you were always crying, that’s why you were always waiting for me. Don’t you think I’ve figured it out now? D’ye know how long it’s been since the memories were restored?”  
  
“I don’t know what you mean.” she said primly.  
  
“The devil you don’t,” he spat at her. “That night in the Room of Requirement, you required some place where you could give yourself to the boy you loved and where no one else would be able to find you.” She flushed and opened her mouth to protest. He raised a hand to forestall her. “Oh, I’m sure you told yourself you meant Ron, but those weren’t the words you were thinking when you tried to get into the room.  _That’s_  why you kept saying what you did, that you didn’t love me. You didn’t want to admit it to yourself. You’d been snogging Ron publicly for weeks, with everyone’s approval, but you still kept letting yourself be caught by me, alone, privately. No one would have approved that, of course. Even the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws would have been scandalized, but the Gryffindors and Slytherins would have murdered the pair of us.”  
  
“You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” she said stiffly.  
  
“Better than you, Hermione, better than you,” Draco told her. "I’m talking about the fact that you convinced yourself that you loved Ron, that you decided, in your pragmatic, logical, insufferably self-righteous way, that if you gave yourself completely to him, then those nasty little episodes you kept having with me--you kept  _letting_  yourself have with me--would stop. Only you heart betrayed you. You didn’t require a room where you could give yourself to Ron Weasley. You required a room where you could give yourself to  _the boy you loved._  And you were devastated to realize that the room had let me in, which could only mean what you’d been denying to yourself for weeks.  _I_  was that boy, not Ron.”  
  
“Stop it,” she said softly, turning her head away, unable to meet his eyes.  
  
“I think not,” he said. “There is one more thing I wish you to understand, so you will realize that there is no use continuing the pretense. The fact that I did not complete my time at Hogwarts doesn’t mean that I did not complete my education. There are aspects of the Obliviate spell of which most people are unaware. Tell me, Miss Hermione Granger, Head Girl and the cleverest witch of our age, did you never learn the one memory an Obliviate spell cannot completely, successfully remove?”  
  
She looked toward him once more, her eyes fearful, but she said nothing.  
  
“Yes,” he said. “You’re smart enough to intuit it, aren’t you? You cannot completely Obliviate the memory of love, of an act of love, between true lovers.”  
  
“You’re wrong,” she whispered, tears forming in her eyes once more. “You must be wrong.”  
  
With a groan, Draco left the loveseat and came back to the bed, sitting beside her and taking her in his arms. He pulled out a handkerchief and gently mopped her tears as he held her close to his breast. “You know I am not,” he said. “Where there is love,  _true_ love, it cannot be totally effaced. Desire will persist, and the lover will be driven to recreate the stolen memory again, and again, until it is returned to him.  
  
She was shaking violently trying to master her sobs. She tossed her head back and looked at him, eyes glittering feverishly.  
  
“That was love, then?” she said bitterly. “Coming to my rooms at night and tossing me to the floor? Shagging me so hard I woke covered in bruises? And later, those two nights you returned to Hogwarts, love was dragging me off and pounding me up against a wall until my back was scraped bloody against the stones?” He returned her look evenly.  
  
“It was as near as I could come to it. As near as you had  _let_  me come.”  
  
She gave him a horrible rictus of a smile.  
  
“And love, of course, was allowing that bitch to burn our child to ash after you let your father rip it from my body, was it?”  
  
He closed his eyes against the pain her words caused him.  
  
“I had no idea that what he planned would have such an effect. And once it was done, yes, it was love that kept me from giving myself away to my father or the bitch. I can’t afford that the slightest whisper, the slightest doubt, attach to my possession of you. You are safe only so long as the world believes my sole desire is to torment you.”  
  
“Ah, but that  _is_  your sole desire, my love,” she said mockingly. “Had you wished me to be free of torment, you’d have used the  _Avada Kedavra_  on me at Wynchgate Field.”  
  
Draco went cold at her words, forced himself to show no reaction to them.  
  
“You’re clearly overwrought,” he said with a calmness he was far from feeling, easing her back onto the pillows and himself out of the bed. “Further explanations can await the return of your strength. Frimble!” The house-elf immediately appeared at his side.  
  
“Yes, master?”  
  
“It is time for Miss Hermione’s meal. You recall my instructions?”  
  
“Certainly, Master. Frimble shall bring the tray most immediately, Master.” He was as good as his word, disappearing and reappearing a scant second later with a lap-tray on which rested a large bowl of rich broth, a pot of tea and another of honey, a cup and saucer of fragile old china, several thick slices of hearty brown bread, a crock of butter, a linen napkin, several pieces of ornate silverware and a delicate bud vase of pink crystal holding a single, perfect white rose.  
  
“Do you know the language of flowers, Hermione?” Draco asked her as Frimble settled the tray on Hermione’s lap and, at his master’s waved dismissal, left them alone.  
  
“Yes,” she admitted.  
  
“Then you understand the significance of the white rose?”  
  
She looked away again. “Purity of intent,” she whispered.  
  
“Yes. Purity of intent. Consider that as you eat your supper. Then get some rest. If you need anything, Frimble will attend to it. I’ll return in the morning.” He left her in her luxurious prison and took himself off to his own chambers. He got no sleep there. There was no rest for him in the sumptuous bed, no joy in the beautiful furnishings, no pleasure in his magnificent estate, no pride in his powerful title.  
  
There was only grief and loss and bitter regret as Draco Malfoy mourned the death of his son.  
  
Two years later, he still mourns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, white roses mean purity, rather than purity of intent. Sorry about the flub. (I should have checked my sources more carefully.) But, another traditional meaning will come up later in the fic.


	4. Pure-blood Ascendance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco parties. Hermione gardens. The world burns.

The loss remains a keen one, both irrevocable and irremediable. He has been denied not only a child with Hermione, but any possibility of a child with her. All Muggles, even Muggle-born wizards, are now no better than slaves, forbidden to possess wands or practice magic. The mixing of blood is a crime punishable by death. Those half-bloods who threw in their lot with Voldemort are tolerated, but the Dark Lord has expressed the intent to breed their unworthy Muggle heritage out of them, and has constrained them to marry only pure-bloods. He has no intention of allowing more half-bloods to dilute the power of wizardkind.  
  
Draco, with whom Hermione has shared the secret of Voldemort’s own heritage, is aware of the irony.  
  
He is also aware of the danger. It is rumored that some wizards have become intimate with their Muggle slaves, and feel that as long as there is no issue from the union, they are safe. Only those far removed from the Dark Lord’s presence indulge that fantasy. Voldemort disapproves of the unions, regardless of issue. His disapproval is something no one close to him is foolish enough to court.  
  
No one but Lord Death.  
  
Knowing that he is tempting fate, Draco is circumspect in his behavior, determined that no one, least of all Voldemort, has reason to suspect that he is anything other than a power-hungry, arrogant, pure-blood Death Eater jealous of his wealth and privilege. So long as the charade is a matter of sneering at his underlings, heaping vile insults upon any Muggle unfortunate enough to cross his path, or carousing with his pure-blood mates from school his secret is easily kept. But he is not always so fortunate, and Wynchgate Field has not been his only killing ground. There are times when the Dark Lord has required rather more difficult service from him than the mere attending of a boring ceremony or acceptance of yet another medal. There are those whom Voldemort has deemed traitors, whose powers are not inconsiderable. Voldemort has not always felt the newly reconstituted Ministry of Magic to be up to the task of bringing them to what now passes for justice, and prefers that his favorite deal with such dangers, personally.  
  
Draco, whom Voldemort favors by sometimes allowing him to see what he has made of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley--perhaps with the aim of inspiring him toward making something similar of Hermione Granger--does not lose sleep over the lives he takes. He knows that the killing curse is infinitely preferable to the years of inventive torture Voldemort so loves to inflict. More than a few of those to whom he has been sent have simply lain down their wands and begged for him to use it, rather than endure the alternative.  
  
Tonight, thankfully, he is free of the killing grounds. It is one of the times when he is fortunate. He need do nothing more lethal than whisper tidbits of court gossip into little Abysinthia’s shell-like ear and drawl a casual warning to his friends that she is taken.  
  
“You almost make me wish I’d dropped out of school to join the war,” Blaise Zabini says dryly, later that evening as he, Draco, Crabbe and Goyle sit around the table in a private room at what is currently the most popular after hours club for young pure-bloods, the  _Wyked Wyvern_. A floor or two beneath them, dozens of couples are bent toward each other over intimate tables in the darkened area near the bar, or are enjoying themselves on the large dance floor where music plays at top volume. But the soundproofing charms here are excellent, and their party is insulated from the noise below.   
  
“Oh, come now, Blaise,” Draco says lazily, before taking a sip of his scotch. He is sprawled on an overstuffed chair, his cloak undone and his robes loosened from his throat. The others are in similar chairs, all of which have been drawn up around a circular table of fine old oak. “You’ve already taken Pansy from me. It’s unsporting of you to fancy the little Langbrey chit, as well.”  
  
“ _Taken,_  be damned,” Zabini scoffs. His own robes are as impeccably draped as if he were getting ready to go out for the evening, rather than finishing up an evening’s carouse. He is admirably sober, despite having had a number of glasses of mead at the ceremony, and being on his third glass of the Wyvern’s best. “Pansy threw herself into my arms because you’d been neglecting her for months. In fact, for the first few weeks we were dating, you were her sole topic of conversation.”  
  
“I’m surprised you put up with that,” Draco allows.  
  
“I didn’t,” the dark-skinned wizard retorts, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve. “Told her I’d had enough, and she could either stop harping on how you’d mistreated her, or go back to you.”  
  
“Mistreated her?” Draco asks with a raised brow, glass of Scotch halfway to his lips.  
  
“Bloody hell, Draco,” Zabini says in exasperation. “You cannot date a pure-blood girl exclusively all through school, continue to carry on with her, again exclusively, for a year or so after she graduates, and not at least  _discuss_  the idea of marriage with her.  
  
“We did discuss it,” Draco informs him. “Told her I wasn’t keen to set up my nursery much before I was thirty, and didn’t see the point of marriage before then.”  
  
“Merlin’s nuts, no wonder she felt mistreated,” Zabini says.  
  
“Why, though?” Crabbe ventures, uncharacteristically loquacious, perhaps due to the bottle of very fine firewhisky he and Goyle have been working their way through. From his fierce frown of concentration, it is clear that Pansy’s actions are inexplicable to him. “Draco wasn’t going out with anyone else, was he? Stands to reason that when he marries, it’ll be Pansy. What’s the problem with a long engagement?”  
  
“The fact that there  _was_  no engagement, I imagine,” Zabini drawls. “If Draco’d had the sense to give her the Malfoy betrothal ring, let her flash that huge emerald around, she’d have been happy to ignore the horde of witches parading in and out of his bed while he was busy  _not_  going out with them. But, without the ring, she wasn’t going to overlook the fact that she was the only one being exclusive in their relationship.”  
  
“As she  _was_  the only woman I was seeing officially, she should have had a bit more faith in me,” Draco says with the air of one who has been much put-upon.  
  
“I cannot fathom,” Zabini says, “how someone so breathtakingly ignorant of the workings of the female mind can yet be so amazingly successful with women.”  
  
“Well, it isn’t exactly their minds I’m interested in, is it?” Draco returns snidely. Crabbe and Goyle laugh uproariously, Zabini shakes his head in mock despair, Draco finishes his Scotch. “I don’t begrudge you Pansy,” he continues. “So you needn’t begrudge me Abysinthia.”  
  
“Pansy and I parted company months ago, Draco. She’s dating that Quidditch player, Flynn. Don’t you read the papers?”  
  
“Not the gossip columns,” Draco shrugs.  
  
“Too busy making the news to read it, I suppose?” Zabini says. Goyle sniggers. Draco merely smirks and waves his wand at his glass, refilling it with Scotch.  
  
“Blaise has a point, though,” Crabbe says slowly. “Not really sporting of you to snap up all the pure-blood girls, Draco. It’s not as if there are loads of them around, anymore, what with all of the families who’ve fallen out of fa--”  
  
“Stow it, you gormless git,” Zabini hisses, sitting up. He has gone gray, and his eyes dart wildly about the room, as if he expects to see Voldemort Apparating into their midst, wand raised to deal a killing curse to them all.  
  
“Relax, Zabini,” Draco says. He doesn’t tell his friends that the Dark Lord is convinced of his loyalty and wouldn’t dream of spying upon him. The newly rebuilt Azkaban is filled with witches and wizards who similarly believed themselves above suspicion. Instead, he leans forward and addresses Crabbe as if he were dimwitted child. “The fact that there aren’t as many pure-blood girls around as there used to be is a  _good_  thing, Vincent,” he explains patiently. “The Dark Lord is separating wheat from chaff. Blood traitors are in Azkaban, their families with them. Only those who go through extensive reeducation are released, so that their loyalty can never be in doubt again. And what that means, Vince, is that when you decide to settle down, you won’t have to worry about finding yourself saddled with a seditious wife, or a girl with questionable family connections. You’ll be able to rest assured that your bride’s loyalties are as solid as your own, and that her family will never do anything to embarrass you.”  
  
“Oh. Well. That’s all right then,” Crabbe smiles and nods. Zabini favors Draco with a cynical grin and raises his glass of mead to him in mocking salute.  
  
It is three in the morning before Draco Apparates back to Dragon Keep. He stands a moment in his chambers, contemplating his empty bed. The sensible thing to do would be to climb into it and get some rest. Hermione, he is sure, is sleeping by now, alone in her own bed in her comfortable prison. But Draco and sensible behavior parted company at Wynchgate Field. Within moments of arriving home, he is sliding under the covers next to Hermione. She doesn’t wake, but murmurs something in her sleep and turns to him. He pulls her closer, buries his face in the mass of soft brown curls, breathing her in, trying to cleanse his lungs of the stench of decay that lingers at court, the stinking smoke from the  _Wyvern_ , the too-sweet odor of the gardenia perfume in which the little Langbrey had apparently marinated herself.  
  
He has endured much that is noxious, tonight, his lungs are clogged with the miasma, and he wants only to avail himself of the sole proven antidote for such things. He inhales deeply of the scent he associates with his lover.  
  
It isn’t apples any longer. She stopped using perfume after Hogwarts, after Wynchgate. But, denied the ability to work magic, or even study it, denied the most basic and simple freedoms and liberties, she has turned her attention to one of the few occupations left to her: the beautiful garden Draco has created for her in the center of the keep. She works in it daily, hours at a time. Her skin and hair are permeated with the sun-warmed, earthy scent of the many flowers she grows there, most particularly with the subtle perfume of her favorite, the Blood Iris. It is the only magical plant he allows her. He doesn’t want to risk her using any of the considerable lore she learned in herbology in some Quixotic, doomed attempt to escape him or attack the Dark Lord. But, not long after she started working in the garden, she began to complain about the aphids infesting her rose bushes, and informed him that there simply wasn’t a Muggle plant that could match the Blood Iris for both keeping away pests and attracting the beneficial insects without which no garden could thrive. She had begged him to make this one exception, and order some bulbs for her. It seemed a small enough thing to do, but never one to underestimate Hermione, he first confirmed that the Blood Iris was, indeed, much prized in wizarding gardens for the qualities she claimed it had, before he relented enough to allow her to plant a border of them. Hermione had been very demonstrative in her show of gratitude. It made him want to find other things for her to be grateful for.  
  
There are few enough. Everyone she loved is either dead or in prison, and he tries to shield her from the horrors that have descended upon the wizarding world with Voldemort’s ascension. He allows her  _The Daily Prophet,_  but only after he has removed any news of political arrests, trials or executions. She is not, has never been, a fool, and he realizes she must be aware that he is censoring what she reads, but she has never argued the matter. He tries to make it up to her by supplying her with other entertainments and distractions.  
  
The Muggle identity he created for himself the year after he left Hogwarts taught him more, he hopes, than the Dark Lord suspects. That identity being known to Voldemort, he has created another, which is not known and which he has ensured, by every device available to him, cannot be traced. Under that identity, he has a flat in a modest, but comfortable neighborhood in London, a bank account that is slowly and carefully becoming, if not as lavish as his account at Gringotts, more than adequate to his needs--current and future--in the Muggle world.  
  
He doesn’t dare let Hermione study magic, and is even careful to keep his own wand out of her reach. But using his Muggle identity, he has supplied her with all the Muggle books and magazines, she could desire. He has even found a way to get Muggle music and entertainment disks—-CDs and DVDs—-to work on a television set he has enchanted to run on magic, rather than electricity. She is also compelled to dress in Muggle clothing, as he does, himself, when he is with her. There’s no establishment in the wizarding world from which he can order robes in her size without risking someone finding out. But, despite Voldemort’s hatred of them, the Dark Lord hasn’t actually tried to wipe out the entire race of Muggles. There are still plenty of Muggle businesses selling clothing by catalog, and Draco makes use of them.  
  
But her existence is secret, isolated, lonely. He dares spend only a few hours each day with her, as his friends feel free to Apparate into his home at their leisure, and it would be suspicious if he objected, or charmed his residence so that they could not enter. His lovers have often surprised him in his bedchamber, but his absence from it is a bit more easily explained, though often at the cost of a jealous row. This means that Hermione spends most of her life in solitude. There is no one, even, to whom she can speak beside Draco himself and the one house-elf with whom he dares share his secret.  
  
Even so, there are things he can do for her, risky things, well worth the risk. He considers that perhaps, when they wake up, he will offer her one of them. Content, he closes his eyes and allows sleep to take him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
  
It is rare for her to wake in his arms, to wake with him at all. The time he spends with her is hedged about with constraints. Being found out would mean death, and worse, for both of them. For herself, death would not be unwelcome. But no matter her deeply conflicted feelings, she cannot wish it for him, and she knows that it is his fear that she might yet face the many things worse than death that truly moves him to caution. Whatever risks he takes himself, he will not risk her. This is the only certainty in her precarious existence.  
  
She knows he will wake soon, and so for these precious few moments, Hermione drinks in the sight of him, his eyes closed and his face relaxed in slumber.  
  
Relaxed, but not unguarded.  
  
Draco is twenty years old, but he does not look innocent in sleep, or childlike, or like a fallen angel. The war has marked him, leaching away what ought to have been a carefree adolescence, replacing it with dread: dread memories, dread fears, dread deeds to his own account. The marks are not particularly physical. His face is unlined, as it should be. He bears no scars from wound or wand. He is not drawn, or gaunt, or stooped from the burdens he carries. But even asleep in the most secret, most deeply warded rooms of his private stronghold, his expression is one of wariness and restraint.  
  
Even in sleep, he will not risk being taken unaware, will not risk revealing a vulnerability to their enemies.

  
She wonders what happened to him last night that drove him to sleep in her bed. The few times he has joined her here have always been after a particularly harrowing event of one kind or another. He never tells her, specifically, what these things are. She must intuit them from his offhand comments or mocking remarks about a conversation with his parents, an event at court, the latest idiocy of one of his friends. And, once, she intuited it from an article in the  _Daily Prophet_  that somehow escaped his censoring: the account of an execution carried out by Lord Death that was mistakenly printed in the fashion section of the paper, rather than in the report of so-called crime statistics.  
  
Murder. And she knows the blood is on his hands. Knows he suffers for it. Knows he would not, were it in his power, recall or revoke his deeds. Knows, even, that those deeds were not unmerciful.  
  
He is twenty years old, and he ought to be out somewhere flying on the Quidditch pitch with a brace of his mates, or drinking too much firewhisky and tumbling off his broom. His worst fear ought to be having his allowance cut off by his parents. He ought not to be seeking refuge in her bed, afraid to show his true face in slumber.  
  
But then, she should not be hidden away, existing in a kind of half-life, his beloved prisoner, dangerous pet, lethal secret.  
  
So many things that should not be, but irrevocably  _are._  Hermione pushes away the bitter melancholy, focuses on the fleeting sweetness of the moment, indulges herself by pressing the lightest of kisses to his warm mouth, hoping not to wake him, to have this one moment to herself.  
  
Her hope is a vain one, the lips beneath hers part, press back. His eyes open, his hand rises to caress her shoulder, gently guide her to turn, until she is on her back and he hovers above her.  
  
He does not wish her a good morning, too wise to speak and break the fragile, silent understanding between them, remind her that she isn’t fighting him this time. She needs no reminder, is keenly aware of her betrayal.  
  
But she cannot survive as she does, cannot bear up under the horror, without some transient moments of respite, of relief. These rare, stolen moments sustain her, enable her to traverse the hellish landscape she inhabits with some vestige of fortitude. She cannot simply deny what is happening in the world outside the keep to live a contented life as Draco’s pampered, secret mistress, and thus she struggles constantly against him. But truly, against herself. For she craves nothing more in life than to lose herself in his arms and imagine the world well lost for love. But though the world is truly, truly lost, there is nothing well about it, and the illness infecting the wizarding world cannot but infect the smaller world locked away behind the walls of Dragon Keep.   
  
In this one moment, she will battle against that infection by not yielding to it. She pulls Draco to her, deepening their kiss. When his hands push the hem of her nightgown upward, she lifts her hips to help him rid her of it, sits up, breaking their kiss long enough to pull it the rest of the way off her body.  
  
He needs no such assistance, having disrobed before joining her in the bed. And so she need only break the contact between them for the barest moment before she is back in his arms, pressed against him, flesh against flesh, tongues tangled and limbs entwined. His hands move over her body in a slow caress, but she is urgent, impatient, needy. She parts her legs invitingly, cradles his hips with her own, teases her soft, wet flesh against his rampant hardness, entices him within.  
  
“Damn you, Hermione,” he breathes, a sentiment that will not break the harmony between them, and kisses her again, more fiercely than before, as he yields to her temptation. Hermione whimpers as he enters her, stretches her, fills her. She lives for this. Moments which should exalt her, but which further taint and corrupt. She wills her too-quick mind to torpor, refuses to consider what it is they do here, refuses to consider anything but the smoky male scent of him surrounding her, the sweet taste of his lips on her own, the feel of his firm muscles beneath her hands, the delicious weight of him pressing her down, the exquisite length of him so tightly clasped in her most intimate embrace.  
  
It has always been this way between them, from that first unexpected kiss in a potions closet on a summer’s day that had wandered into fall. Passionate. Consuming. Inevitable. No matter the lies she told herself in Hogwarts, no matter the promises to her conscience that the latest time would be the last time, that she would not allow him to catch her alone again, or would not yield to him if he did, a part of her was always waiting, and she would find excuses to go off alone more often than she had before. Oh, there had always been perfectly logical reasons--the need for quiet to study the most common--but none of them had been the truth. The truth had been that she had needed Draco to find her, and had needed what happened between them, craved it, lived for it, desired it with every cell in her body, every fiber of her being.  
  
Every fiber of her being is trying to get closer to every fiber of his, right now, and his goal is similar. There is a difference in the quality of what they do together in these rare times when she does not resist him. When she fights him, he fights back, dominating her, forcing her to submit, and though in the soul of her, from that first kiss in the potions closet, she has wanted him as desperately as he has wanted her, she also needs to fight him. Even though she needs him to win.  
  
It is never a question of  _letting_  him win. That would make a mockery of her resistance. When he wins, when she is trembling and pliant in his arms, it is because he has left her no choice but to be trembling and pliant. And that eases her guilt. The pleasure she is given is not something she has sought out, but something she is given no choice but to endure. She is not betraying her friends and her beliefs by giving herself to the Death Easter whose hands are steeped in blood.  
  
They make love like a battle, and it is not surprising that she becomes battle-weary.  
  
The truth is, those she might consider herself betraying are dead, she is alive, and sometimes--sometimes--the only way she can affirm her life, affirm the value of continuing to live in such a world as this has become, is to simply stop fighting Draco, and to express the love she inexplicably came to feel for him, in the most primal, intimate, physical way open to her.  
  
And on those rare occasions when she lets go of her sorrow and grief, when she frees herself to make love to him as she longs to do, she frees him, as well. He does not need to force her to give in to what is between them, he can revel in her gift of it to him, instead.  
  
He can make love to her as tenderly, as passionately, as reverently as he has always wanted to do.  
  
But he cannot speak it, cannot tell her he loves her, because that will remind her of how deep her betrayal runs. They have never said the words, never spoken of them since the night she woke in her bed at Dragon's Keep for the first time. He can only show her, and he shows her now.  
  
There is not an inch of her skin that is not sacred to him, and he is reverent in his attentions. His kisses worship her flesh, his touches are acts of adoration. In taking her, he is giving himself, and he does this unstintingly, the aim not his pleasure, but her own. It is not that he is selfless. He is, in fact, greedy for every touch of her, every taste. But this is the only way he can express his love for her, and these are the precious, rare times, when he is allowed to give the expression.  
  
He is inside her tight, welcoming heat and he savors each moment. His strokes are slow and deep, he cannot go deep enough, make himself enough a part of her. Even as her arms embrace him, even as she drinks down the taste of him in tender kisses, he wants to deepen the taste, tighten the embrace. He wants never to leave her, and for this moment never to end. It will, it must. But he can prolong it, draw it out, make it last as long as possible, keep the world at bay just a little longer.  
  
So he does not rush, but builds her pleasure with exquisite, torturous slowness, knowing the longer he takes, the more explosive her climax will be when he finally lets her reach it. He is not above teasing her, letting her get close, then shifting his position subtly, keeping her from reaching her peak. Her denies her release, once, twice, and again, denies it until she is no longer caressing him, but clawing at his back, no longer kissing his lips, but biting his neck, his shoulders, until her sweet moans have become desperate cries, until she is begging, pleading for the release only he can give her.   
  
When he finally relents, finally pushes her over the edge, her climax is every bit as explosive as he could wish, the force of it making it impossible, for once, for him to resist the pull of her body on his own, and he joins her in rapture, waves of ecstasy consuming them, drowning them both. He kisses her desperately, as if he wants to swallow her whole, or be swallowed, whole, by her, and it is long before the tide releases them, before they calm, before he gives her a final, gentle kiss, and collapses to her side.  
  
Now ought to be a time for intimate laughter, private jokes, tender exchanges. Draco can only be grateful that she's not weeping, this time, that she allows him to pull her into his arms, hold her, that she curls her body closer to his, resting her head on his shoulder.  
  
This is as near to happiness as he has ever come, as he ever expects to come.  
  
He remembers the plans that had begun forming in his mind before he drifted off to sleep the night before.  
  
"That Muggle bit of music you like, Turn, something."  
  
"Turandot?" she asks.  
  
"Yes. It's being performed in London on the fifteenth. I thought I'd get us tickets. I can make my excuses at court, perhaps we could make a long weekend of it, visit the National Gallery or the British Museum?"  
  
"Are you sure?" she asks hesitantly. The bit of normalcy, the chance to be free of her cage, however fleetingly, is beyond tempting. But she can hardly be insensible of the danger. Even though Draco uses extremely effective glamours to alter their appearance, glamours that cannot be undone by a simple  _Finite Incantatum_ , even though it is unlikely that they will run into anyone from Voldemort's inner circle in Muggle London, she is always afraid, on these rare excursions, that they will reveal themselves, by word or deed or tone of voice, to someone with business in that part of the world, someone who will run to the Dark Lord with tales of betrayal. He understands her fear, but he will not let it rob them of this rare chance for respite.  
  
"I'll protect you, Hermione. You needn't fear." He pulls her into his arms again, and she acquiesces, giving tacit consent to the excursion, and to the continuation of earlier pleasures.  
  
They spend the morning making love, but he cannot stay in her bed past noon. His friends will be awake by now, after the long carouse at court. There will be brunch with his mother, or perhaps an appearance to be made in some popular bistro or cafe, with a particular friend--or girlfriend. She knows that there have been an unending stream of them, witches he dates so that what he does with her will never be suspected. She lets him go. She has no choice.   
  
She wishes, sometimes, that the world truly had been well lost for love. She would give much--everything--to remain in Draco's arms without guilt, without the dreadful cost paid in blood for the privilege.  
  
Loving someone ought not to be a privilege bought with the lives of one's friends. And even though she had not been the purchaser, she cannot deny that the purchase has been made, the price paid, on her behalf.  
  
Her wish is useless, as all such wishes are. Voldemort won, Harry lost, and she knows herself lost beyond saving.  
  
Brooding upon these things is pointless. She turns for solace, as she often does, to her beautiful garden.   
  
It is spring, and there is much for her to do. Her Blood Irises want cultivating. The bulbs from last year's plants have twinned, and must be separated so that they will bloom again this year--twice as many as before. Right now, that is the most important task. The Blood Iris is particularly delicate, and if she does not tend to them quickly, the plants will go dormant and won't give any blooms this year. Without its blooms, the Blood Iris is useless for keeping pests at bay, or for attracting beneficial insects. More. No blooms means no petals to be saved and dried for the potpourri that scents the rooms of her lovely cage, none for the thousand other uses they lend themselves to, none to put away against the day she knows she will need them. Blood Iris petals become potent when dried, their spicy scent rich and full, but without magic to preserve them, they lose that potency over the course of the year, the scent fading, along with the petals' other properties. She must gather them year to year, and shudders to think what might happen if she should ever be without a crop of blooms to dry.  
  
This year, though, she should have more than enough to meet her needs. The Blood Iris is versatile in its uses. She's become quite fond of the calming tea that can be made with it, and it is the main ingredient in the scented soap she makes for her bath. Among its many other virtues, the Blood Iris, properly prepared, is excellent for refining the texture of one's skin. Better yet, it can be used in concert with other herbs and plants, enhancing their properties, medicinal or cosmetic. Nothing in the wizarding world, or the Muggle one, is quite so efficacious, and she is delighted to realize just how many plants she has this year. Perhaps she'll even have enough to make the candied petals Draco now fancies.  
  
Yes. For one more year, she is safe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
  
There is time for Draco to shower before he goes off to the obligatory brunch with the young pure-blood wizards widely regarded as his mates. It isn't just Zabini, Crabbe and Goyle. A few of Slytherin House who were a year or two ahead of them at Hogwarts, and old enough to participate in the war, have managed to survive it, Marcus Flint and Adrian Pucey amongst them. There is also Theo Nott from their own year. Draco has a particular interest in speaking with Theo. It is not the sort of conversation he wants to have in public, so he bides his time.  
  
Brunch is in another private parlor, this one at an exclusive cafe called  _Belle Noire._  It is, of course, a champagne brunch, and Draco makes sure the champagne keeps flowing. Service at the  _Belle Noire_  is first rate. For the most part. One young witch, though she tries to hide it, becomes just a bit nervous as she serves Malfoy his appetizer of  _fois gras_  with figs and mascarpone on a bed of spring greens. She is a plain little thing, sallow complexioned with hair that tries to be dark blond rather than light brown, but doesn't quite manage to be either. Her nervousness is too commonplace for him to remark. Even his intimates regard him with a touch more wariness now he has become Lord Death. To most of the wizarding world he is a figure of terror second only to Voldemort himself. He doesn't bother to reassure the girl. His notice will only terrorize her further, and he really has no desire to have the expensive champagne she is offering to him spilled down his robes. He ignores her as much as possible, knowing that only failing to draw his attention will soothe her nerves.  
  
Brunch progresses and the young wizards spend a convivial hour or two talking Quidditch and quim. Pucey has a particularly salacious tidbit to relate about a pair of very open-minded sisters he's bedding. They're pure-bloods, but not wealthy enough to run in their circle. Fair game, in other words.  
  
"Almost as poor as the Weasleys," he admits. "Remember them?"  
  
"Not many of them left to remember, are there?" Nott points out. "The parents and the older sons were all killed at Wynchgate. And we all know what happened to Ron." Everyone knows what happened to Ron. And to Harry. Voldemort has been very careful not to torture them  _quite_  to death. They usually languish in the dungeons, but Voldemort does trot them out for certain festivities, at which times they lie chained before his throne for all his court, and all the wizarding world, to see. So scabbed, so broken, such twisted bits of gibbering, mindless flesh as to be barely recognizable as human, they make quite an effective propaganda piece, warning any who might consider rebellion, or even simple disobedience, of the probable consequences. Draco's gaze flickers over Nott. It is unfortunate that not everyone understands the scope of what might be considered  _disobedience._  
  
"Wasn't there a younger girl, too?" Flint asks. "Played Quidditch?"  
  
"Ginny Weasley," Draco supplies. "She dated Potter briefly in sixth year. Well, we were in sixth. She was in fifth."  
  
"So, she was too young for Wynchgate," Flint muses. "What happened to her?"  
  
Draco shrugs. "Given her family were blood traitors to a man--even Percy, who seemed to have his wits about him and was starting to make some solid career choices in the Ministry showed his true colors in the end. He died at Wynchgate, trying to save his mother." It is one of the few deaths not put down to his own account. His Aunt Bella had done the honors, there. "At all odds, Ginny was captured and imprisoned a few days after the battle," he tells the others. "Probably died in prison."  
  
"No. She's on the list for reeducation," Nott says.  
  
Voldemort quickly realized that if he purged the wizarding world of blood traitors as thoroughly as he would like, the remaining pure-bloods, already interrelated, would become dangerously inbred. He decided that younger witches of blood traitor families might be spared, if it were possible to ensure that their loyalties were completely redirected. The procedure involves a combination of Obliviation, brainwashing, and outright torture. Those who survive it have been made docile in the extreme, and are almost pathetically eager to please whoever is put in authority over them. It is not surprising that reeducated witches of acceptable bloodlines are quite prized as wives among the pure-blood wizards who have won the war. There isn't a chance in hell that a woman who went through the process once will ever be anything but a perfectly obedient, eagerly accommodating wife, or that she'll ever step a toe out of line. Even a madwoman would not risk being put through that particular circle of hell a second time. Draco's cousin Nymphadora, who had been captured before Wynchgate, is now the reeducated wife of a wizard twice her age. She is a model of devotion, anticipating her husband's least requirement and eagerly doing his bidding. Draco has noticed that she never raises her eyes in company, never speaks unless spoken to, and that her voice, when it is used, is scarce more than a whisper. It is difficult to imagine that this timid, self-effacing witch was ever a highly competent Auror.   
  
Even so, reeducation is reserved for witches like his cousin Nymphadora whose families aren't entirely ridden with blood traitors. Ginny Weasley's family were blood traitors on all sides, and for generations back.  
  
"Reeducation?" he muses aloud. "With a pedigree like that? I'm surprised our lord didn't simply kill her outright." The nervous young witch is back, her almost-blond hair just a tad untidy, a few strands slipping from the proper, elegant knot into which all the female servers at  _Belle Noir_  twist their hair. Her hands tremble slightly as she clears away his used plate and sets a clean one before him. Draco notices, but pretends he does not.  
  
"Our lord, being just and merciful, seemed to think it worth the effort," Zabini says with studied indifference. "Perhaps mated to a particularly strong wizard to keep her in line, she can make herself useful producing another generation of pure-bloods."  
  
"Might be amusing," Flint grins. "She did play Quidditch, after all. And the mother was fertile enough, Merlin knows." Flint goes on to make some off-color observations that are greeted with suitably ribald laughter from everyone but Zabini, who looks slightly bored, and Draco himself, who is remembering an occasion when he found himself on the receiving end of a particularly nasty bat-bogey hex. Little Ginny Weasley once had the potential to be quite the powerful witch. It is almost a pity that her only possible future is as a submissive brood mare to a brute like Flint.  
  
Then again, at least she has a future. So many others do not.  
  
"Think you'll offer for her, Marcus?" Zabini asks the question Draco has been considering. Flint laughs heartily.  
  
"Hell, no. She'll come out of reeducation already broken to the saddle. I like to do my own breaking, thanks." More ribald laughter follows this comment, before the talk returns to Quidditch, once more.   
  
The last course served at brunch is an extravagance of fresh fruits and berries, glazed tortes, delicate little cakes, with pots of chocolate and Devonshire cream. Most of the group are too full to indulge, although Zabini, who has eaten only sparingly of the earlier courses deigns to fill a small plate with an assortment of berries and grapes. Crabbe and Goyle, as ever, are happy to take up the slack.  
  
As a glass of fluted crystal filled with strawberries in champagne is set before him, Draco realizes that the hand in which it is held is now trembling so badly, the champagne is in danger of spilling over the edge of the glass. As soon as it is safely settled before him, his own hand strikes like a serpent, grasping the wrist of the young witch and pulling her to her knees beside his chair.  
  
"I say, Malfoy," Flint starts to protest. Draco spares him a glance, causing the other man to pale, recognizing that he is not dealing with the underclassman he knew, but with Lord Death. Flint subsides. The others have gone still as well. As has everyone else in  _Belle Noir._  The servers are frozen in place, cleared plates still in their hands, while the maitre d' hovers at the edge of the action, pale and wringing his hands but not daring to interfere.  
  
Draco reaches his other hand to the now unraveling topknot the little witch wears, pulling her head back far enough so that he can stare into her eyes. She, alone, has not grown still, but is sobbing, moaning, struggling, babbling excuses and pleas. He isn't interested. A simple  _Legilimens_  tells him all he needs to know.  
  
They know her as Margaret Brown, here, because she is too frightened to use her real name, Marigold Bones. She is a half-blood, too terrified of the Dark Lord to ever dream of doing anything in the least disloyal. Marigold's tragic secret, the one she was terrified that Lord Death would uncover, is not that she has added essence of mandrake to Draco's strawberries ensuring his appallingly swift and unutterably painful death, which was his initial suspicion, or that she is a member of some new group of blood traitors that hopes to succeed where the Order of the Phoenix failed, which was another possibility he had considered. No. The secret hugged tight to her breast, the one she fears will cost her her life if discovered, is that she is in love with another half-blood, one Rupert Fletcher, and they want desperately to marry. They cannot, under current law. Even the desire to marry may be considered criminal. However, Draco can see that little Marigold is far too timid to act on her illicit desires. Rupert has been trying to persuade her that they could leave wizarding Britain and make a life for themselves elsewhere, that there is nothing disloyal to the Dark Lord in such actions. Draco supposes the boy sincerely believes that as, to judge by Marigold's memories, Rupert isn't a political sort. Still, his proposed course of action just skirts legalities. But not enough to concern the Dark Lord and certainly not enough for Draco to interfere. He lets go of Marigold's wrist and the now sobbing girl collapses to the floor.  
  
"Belgium," he tells her, handing her a fine lawn handkerchief to dry her tears. "I'm sure young Rupert will find use for his skill with Transfiguration charms there. I'll send you a wedding present, shall I?" he adds dryly. Marigold, her eyes wide, falls over herself making her apologies. "Thank you, my lord," she finally gasps before the equally apologetic maitre d' leads her back to the kitchens.   
  
Zabini gives Draco a level look, then breaks the inordinately tense silence with the casually drawled observation that Draco really ought to try the blackberries, as they are most excellently ripe. Conversation quickly returns to its prior levels of conviviality, nearly not forced, at all.  
  
Eventually, brunch and an appalling amount of champagne having duly been consumed, the various young men go off about their individual business, some alone, some together. Draco manages to engage Nott in a discussion about his father's health--the elder Nott has some war wounds that remain troublesome, despite the best that St. Mungo's can do-- as the group breaks up, and to keep him so engaged until the last of their companions has Disapparated elsewhere. A murmured  _Inviolate_  and Draco is ready to move the conversation on to the true topic that interests him.  
  
"You've always been clever, Theo," Draco acknowledges. "More clever than you really let on at Hogwarts. It took me years to see that."  
  
"Thank you," Nott says warily, knowing that Lord Death did not detain him simply to give him a pointless compliment. He isn't wrong.  
  
"And so I wonder," Draco says, pouring each of them another glass of champagne, "how a man who is clever enough not to draw attention to himself in school can be stupid enough to draw interest from a much more dangerous quarter than his old schoolmates."  
  
"I'm sure I don't know--"  
  
"The fuck you don't," Draco says brutally. "You haven't taken the mark, Theo. Did you think that would be overlooked? Forgotten? Could you possibly be stupid enough to think it would go unnoticed?"  
  
Theo Nott's grasp tightens on the stem of his champagne flute. The flute is a heavy, elegant piece of antique lead crystal, not easily broken. That is the only reason why it does not snap in the death-grip Nott has on it.  
  
"Why should it be remarked?" he says with seeming calm, but there is a thin thread of desperation in his voice that is not so well hidden that Draco cannot suss it out. "War's over, so there's no real need, is there? Not everyone takes the mark. Zabini hasn't. It doesn't mean I'm disloyal."  
  
"Do you really think that just because the war is won, there's no need to declare your loyalty?" Draco says, incredulous. "Zabini is a wealthy playboy whose family has been avoiding political entanglements since the Borgias. He hasn't taken the mark, but he is always at court. Always. His family's support has been monetary, and he has continued that trend. There was a very handsome gift of antique parchments containing some rare old spells at the last Victory Day celebration, from Blaise himself, not his family."  
  
"So you're saying I should start hanging out at a lot of useless ceremonies and go antiquing with Blaise, is that it?" Nott snarls. "Merlin! My father nearly died in that--in the Dark Lord's service. Isn't that enough?"  
  
"It's because you're your father's son that there are expectations, Theo," Draco tells him. "And you're not meeting them. Why do you think he has all those useless ceremonies, except to sift everyone's loyalties? You won't come to court except for the obligatory annual celebrations, or unless your father has given you a direct order. If you had taken the mark, if you gave our Lord proof that you are loyal unto death, he wouldn't care if you never came to another public ceremony for the rest of your life. So long as you are marked, so long as you are bound to come at his call, the ceremonies and rituals are secondary. But you haven't done either, Theo. And he has noticed."  
  
"Did he...did he send you to talk to me?" Nott asks, and there is no hiding the fear, now.  
  
"Theo, if he had decided to involve me, we wouldn't be having a polite conversation over a bottle of Cristal," Draco says softly. "He doesn't use me as a diplomat. I thought you knew that." Nott nods his head. Draco's uses to the Dark Lord are no more secret than are Harry's and Ron's. "There'll be another initiation next month," Draco continues. "Do us both a favor and put your name on the list."  
  
"I...yes. Of course," Nott says shakily. "Thank you, Draco."  
  
Draco snorts, and pours out the last of the Cristal into their empty flutes. The warning is as much for his own sake as for Nott's. There's enough blood on his hands without adding that of an old friend.


	5. Pursuit of Happiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three different witches contemplate Draco Malfoy...and their own secrets.

The  _Belle Noire_  is popular with pure-blood witches, as well as wizards, and the day after Lord Death's brunch, the distaff side of Slytherin, along with some of their equally well pedigreed friends from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, enjoy a post-shopping tea. If the circle of pure-blood girls is somewhat smaller than it has been in years past, no one mentions absent friends. It would be unwise to admit to missing the company of a witch who has been killed for a blood traitor, or even one who is undergoing reeducation. There is hope for the latter, of course, but it is best to wait to see how these things turn out. The Dark Lord's standards of loyalty are very high, and the penalties for failing the tests of loyalty are commensurate with that standard.  
  
The current subjects of discourse will present no difficulties. Pansy Parkinson fixes an expression of polite interest on her face as Daphne Greengrass rhapsodizes about her new snake skin pumps. Again. Millicent Bulstrode isn't quite so patient, and manages to get the conversation away from the new purchases they've already discussed for hours, and onto last night's court ceremonies, though the focus remains on sartorial rather than political matters. Who was wearing what robes, in which colors with what jewels. The general consensus is that Narcissa Malfoy, Lady Lucius, is the epitome of pure-blood elegance, and a model for all young witches, while Mrs. Nott's fondness for robes of peacock blue is, given her complexion, unfortunate. Pansy is careful to say nothing unkind about the woman, whose husband is famously suffering from a war wound incurred on the Dark Lord's behalf. Pansy regards it as impolitic, if not outright disloyal, to criticize a war hero's wife. She is happy to murmur an agreement about Narcissa Malfoy's exquisite taste, and notes, as well, that for a woman confined to Azkaban for over ten years, Bellatrix Lestrange, who had worn robes of black silk moiré edged with beads of jet along with a stunning Victorian choker of jet and crystal, is aging relatively handsomely. The remark is purely political: no matter how elegant her robes, how stylish the upsweep of her hair, how striking her antique jewels or how aristocratic her face, Lestrange is a raving lunatic. As she is a raving lunatic who is amongst the favorites of the Dark Lord, Pansy will keep her opinion of the older witch's mental state to herself.  
  
Eventually, as Pansy knows it must, the conversation comes around to the topic that most interests her.  
  
"...lovely robes, but I didn't recognize her," Daphne is saying. "Do you know why they were with the Malfoys?" Pansy's expression does not change, but her attention is riveted.  
  
“Those are the Langbreys," another witch, a former Hufflepuff, tells them. "Abysinthia transferred from Durmstrang for her last year, just after the war, and was sorted into my House. Her father has some connection to the Ministry, so perhaps the elder Lord Malfoy is cultivating him." This information stirs a memory for Pansy, something her father has mentioned in passing.  
  
"Why on earth would he need to cultivate someone at the Ministry?" Millicent wonders. "Between his influence and his son’s I'm sure that anyone in government would jump to do the bidding of either Lord Malfoy."  
  
"My father mentioned that Mr. Langbrey is in the diplomatic corps," Pansy says with an admirable show of indifference. "Perhaps Lucius sought his advice on some foreign venture he has in mind. I believe the family lived abroad for a while, which may be why the daughter was at Durmstrang." The use of Lucius' familiar name rather than his title or his surname is deliberate, a subtle reminder of Pansy's own status. She and Draco are no longer a couple, but she still has the friendship and respect of the family, and may therefore be considered one of the more influential members of court. Having been sorted into Slytherin, she understands the subtleties of power, and is careful to retain her influence with the Malfoys by not seeming to use it.  
  
"Yes, you're right," the Hufflepuff witch agrees with a deferential nod to Pansy. "I'd forgotten that, but she did mention it, I'm sure. It must have been when she first arrived, because after she settled in, she never spoke of anything but Quidditch and shopping."  
  
"Not even school gossip?" Daphne wonders, clearly amazed that any witch can get through the terms without paying attention to the Hogwarts grapevine.  
  
"Not even  _school,_ " the Hufflepuff laughs. "Honestly, I don't know how she passed her N.E.W.T.s, as I never once heard her say a single word about any academic subject. You would have thought she'd come to Hogwarts for the sole purpose of studying Snitches, Bludgers and Quaffles."  
  
Pansy continues to seem to pay no more than polite attention as the knife twists slowly in her heart. Is that what it would have taken for her to keep Draco? Should she have said nothing about the growing distance between them at the end of fifth year, held her tongue as he began to shut her out of his life entirely in sixth year? And, when he came back to her after the war, should she have kept silent about the endless parade of witches he was taking into his bed when he was supposed to be dating her? If she had turned a blind eye to his flagrant infidelity, limited her conversation to praise of his heroism and his standing with Voldemort, if she had followed his favorite Quidditch teams, and spoken of nothing but them--if she had accepted that he was not going to marry her for another ten years, and simply asked him to make their engagement official, rather than pressing him to set a date for their wedding--if she had been willing to sleep with him even without the Malfoy engagement ring, at the least, gracing her finger--would she still be the witch everyone, including his parents, expected him to marry?  
  
Her speculation is pointless, she knows. The truth is, there is little of the Draco she has loved her whole life left in the man known to the wizarding world as  _Lord Death._  That passionate, laughing, wickedly mischievous boy was swallowed up in the Great Wizarding War, leaving a much colder, more dangerous man in his place. The passion has been banked, focused solely on redeeming his family in the Dark Lord's eyes. The laughter, admittedly most often at the expense of his enemies, is reduced to an occasional smirk that might as often be directed at those who call him  _friend_. And the wicked mischief has disappeared altogether. Lord Death does not play schoolboy pranks or get up to drunken idiocy with his mates, as even the conservative and proper Zabini has been known to do on occasion. Oh, he participates in revels, carouses with the best of them, drinks Ogden's Old by the bottleful. But he never loses control, never lets down his guard, never lets himself be carried away in the moment. And, instead of playing pranks on his enemies, he keeps them in dungeons, subjecting them to tortures the likes of which do not bear thinking about.  
  
The Draco Malfoy she loved would  _never_  have done something so cold-blooded. Then again, the Draco Malfoy she loved would never have taken another witch--series of witches--to his bed when Pansy told him she wasn't quite ready for physical intimacy. That Draco Malfoy would have asked her to marry him the day they finished Hogwarts, would have seen the wedding celebrated within a year after that, and if he had delayed in setting up their nursery, no matter. They would have had years to do their duty to their bloodlines, in producing the next generation of pure-blood Malfoys.  
  
That Draco Malfoy is as lost to her as if Harry bloody Potter had hit him full on with  _Avada Kedavra_  
  
Or, as if Voldemort had.  
  
Pansy instantly suppresses that treacherous thought, keenly aware of the danger. She is an accomplished Occlumens, of course--life at the Dark Lord's court is too dangerous not to have perfected that skill--but she does not wish to invite disaster by letting her thoughts wander carelessly down dangerous pathways.  
  
The truth of the matter is, she  _isn't_  disloyal. She truly does believe the wizarding world is safer, better off, without the constant incursion of Muggle-borns. She may regret the loss of those friends who turned out to be blood traitors, and sincerely hope that those who are being reeducated will be happier when they return to society--able to lead productive lives once they've seen the error of their ways, and abandoned their ridiculous political leanings--but she doesn't really think they should have been treated any differently than they were. It was war. There are always casualties in war, aren't there? And reeducation is certainly nothing to be ashamed of, in her opinion. Her maternal uncle married a reeducated witch who has made him a perfectly lovely wife. A bit timid, to be sure, but then Pansy didn't know her before her reeducation, so perhaps Aunt Dora has always been on the timid side. It doesn't matter. What matters is that Aunt Dora is happy to be married to Uncle Uriah, looking forward to her first child, and undyingly loyal to the Dark Lord. Really, what better outcome could there be for a former blood traitor? Their lord truly was merciful and magnanimous to have created this way for blood traitors to redeem themselves.  
  
"...was attentive, but did you think he was, well,  _smitten?"_  The Hufflepuff witch's excited question draws Pansy back into the conversation. She realizes that Millicent and Daphne are flashing her covert worried glances, but Pansy has schooled herself well, and they each heave sighs of relief to find her looking no more than mildly interested in speculation about whether or not Draco Malfoy has finally found a witch to whom he intends to pay serious court.  
  
"Really, Fiona, smitten?" Daphne says with a trace of false amusement. "Lord Draco may be indulging in one of his usual flirtations, but he hardly had the look of a man who's lost his heart, or is in any danger of losing it."  
  
"Presuming he has a heart to lose," Millicent snorts. She is nothing if not loyal, and Pansy feels a rush of gratitude to her. The Hufflepuff witch blushes, belatedly remembering why Millicent, Daphne and Pansy's other close friends might take leave to doubt that Lord Death is capable of the finer feelings. Although Pansy left Draco, subsequently dated Blaise Zabini and only recently ended things with a third wizard, Quidditch player Drew Flynn, it is no secret that she was deeply hurt by Malfoy’s behavior during the time when the were a couple. By all accounts, though, Pansy has put the memories of his infidelities and the pain they caused her well behind her, and the Hufflepuff witch is relieved to see that Pansy shows no signs, now, of any discomfiture over the discussion of Lord Death’s current love life.  
  
"Well, she's a lovely girl, and he could do worse," Pansy says tranquilly. "As to whether or not he's lost his heart, I suppose time will tell, won't it? Now, what about the witch on Zabini's arm? I've never seen her before, either."  
  
Zabini was merely escorting his cousin's wife to court, as the cousin himself is on the continent, looking after some family business concerns. Blaise has been most attentive in his cousin's absence, the Ravenclaw witch purrs,  _most_  attentive. Pansy's interest in this scandalous tidbit appears every bit as avid as that of her friends. It isn't, of course, no matter that Blaise was, technically, her first lover. Everyone knows their parting was amicable. So she titters over the news that Blaise  _escorted_  his cousin’s wife to a retreat in the Cotswolds, a very private retreat, where they spent an entire week together, and when Daphne archly directs an inquiry her way regarding Blaise’s ability to keep a lady entertained, casts her eyes down, and murmurs something just as arch, as well as slyly suggestive, in answer. Her comment sets the entire table laughing appreciatively. Blaise should thank her, she reflects as she sees the speculative light come into several pairs of eyes. His stock, already high, has just gone up a few points with several highly eligible pure-blood witches.  
  
Although it hasn’t been that long since the lot of them returned from the powder room, the stress of keeping up the mask of amused, but detached, interest is taking its toll on her, and Pansy excuses herself just before the final course is served. Daphne casts her another concerned look and Millicent offers to go with her, but Pansy turns the offer aside with a light comment, and manages to escape by herself, careful to make her flight look like nothing more than a sedate walk to the loo.  
  
Pansy Parkinson has always known the role she is to play in life--devoted daughter, pure-blood debutant, loyal follower of the Dark Lord and, eventually, wife to a suitable pure-blood wizard, and mother of said wizard’s heir. She has always been at pains to carry that role off flawlessly. Today is no different. So, once secluded in the loo, she casts a privacy spell on herself, indulges in a bout of tears that is, by necessity, brief, then uses a glamour to dispel the resultant puffy redness of her eyes. Another glamour repairs her make-up and ensures that her dark hair is as elegantly coiffed as ever. Only when she looks the very model of a stylish, pure-blood debutant without a care in the world does she emerge from the powder room to make her way across the restaurant to the private room where she and her friends have been taking tea.  
  
It is when she walks past the bar that the accident happens, someone stepping back too quickly, jostling her slightly, spilling a glass of white wine on her robes.  
  
“Oh, Merlin, I’m terribly sorry,” a wizard says in chagrin, and Pansy looks up into a pair of amazingly dark eyes set in one of the most handsome faces she has ever seen. “Please,” the wizard says earnestly, in an accent she can’t quite place, “you must allow me to....I say, Pansy? Pansy Parkinson?”  
  
“I...yes. Have we met?” She is certain they have not. Though he seems to be somewhat older, mid-thirties to her barely twenty, this man could not but have left a lasting impression if she had ever encountered him before. He is tall, his hair so dark a brown as to be almost black, and his equally dark eyes are lively with humor and intelligence. The robes he is wearing are understated, but they are of excellent cut and cloth, and she has a very good idea of the galleons they must have cost. No, there would be no forgetting this man if they had previously crossed paths. Yet he graces her with a dazzling smile and assures her, as he does a quick cleaning spell on her robes that, yes, indeed, they have most certainly met.  
  
“I’m Edmund Kincaid. I married your cousin Laurel.” His voice softens on the name, his expression sad and tender, and it comes to her then, a childhood memory of a day of transcendent splendor, spring on the cusp of summer, a sunlit garden in full bloom, the air sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and roses. In the center of this setting of fairy-tale beauty, was the perfect fairy-tale couple, lovely, golden Cousin Laurel, about to marry her tall, dark and handsome prince. Five-year-old Pansy was a participant in the festivities, the flower girl. She had felt quite dignified and grown-up in her first dress-robes, wearing slippers with tiny kitten heels, and having been entrusted with the solemn duty of scattering flower petals across the bride’s path, a duty she had been quite conscientious in performing.  
  
“Cousin Edmund,” Pansy says warmly. “How have you been? And the girls?” Laurel, by all accounts building an excellent career for herself on the cutting edge of potions research, bore Edmund two daughters before dying in a potions accident, news of which had reached Pansy during her sixth year at Hogwarts. But standing in the aisle near the bar is not the proper place for this reunion. Edmund quickly scans the area for an empty table and leads Pansy to one nearby.  
  
“Everyone’s fine,” Edmund says, pulling out a chair and making sure she is comfortably seated before taking his own seat beside her. “Vivian will be attending the Salem Witches’ Institute in the fall. She’s torn between excitement at finally starting school and melancholy at leaving our home in Manhattan.” Edmund, a younger son, had taken Laurel across the pond not long after their wedding. Establishing himself in New York, he had eventually made a fortune to rival the one in his older brother’s vaults at Gringotts. That explained his accent, Pansy thought, proper British wizard overlain with Yank. “Beryl, meanwhile,” he went on, “is torn between jealousy of her big sister and delight at having my attention to herself.”  
  
“I remember feeling precisely the same as Vivian when I began school,” Pansy laughs. “My brother was just a toddler, and I don’t think he quite knew what was going on. So, no jealousy, there. But I have to say, Edmund, that I am quite amazed you should recognize me. I would like to think I have changed since I was five!”  
  
“Oh, decidedly! But you were unforgettable, even then,” Edmund says kindly. “Your mother had taken it into her head that your robes should befit your name, getting darker at the hems and cuffs, lighter at the waist and shoulder, so that you looked like a little pansy flower. You even scattered pansy petals rather than rose petals, at the ceremony. I had my doubts when the scheme was proposed, but the groom’s opinion isn’t wanted about such maters, and Laurel was absolutely charmed by the idea. And as ever, she was right. You were quite the most adorable flower-girl I had ever seen. Of course I would know you at once, and it was only to be expected that the adorable child would grow up to be such a fetching young woman.” His words make Pansy blush in pleasure. There is a warmth in his voice that tells her the compliment is sincere, and not some idle bit of politesse.   
  
“What brings you to England?” she asks. “Are the girls with you? You must come to dinner. Mother will be so pleased to see you.”  
  
“No, the girls stayed in New York with my sister Isabelle. Izzy and I were always close, and she moved to the states a year after I did. I’m here on business, though I will be looking in on Laurel’s parents and my own family before I go back.”  
  
Pansy doesn’t ask why he hasn’t brought his daughters, who are not yet in school, along to England to visit their grandparents and other family members. Instead, she and Edmund make firm plans for him to call on the Parkinsons the next night, before Pansy excuses herself to return to her friends who have been wondering what has kept her so long.   
  
For the first time in a long time, the smile she wears when she rejoins them is genuine.  


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
  
While Pansy enjoys her outing with friends in London, Narcissa Malfoy shares a more quiet visit with her sister at the manor.  
  
“Our lord was quite pleased to see Draco at court with such a lovely young lady,” Bella informs her. It is a warm spring day and they are taking tea in the garden. “Do you know if things are serious?”  
  
“They’ve only just met,” Narcissa says guardedly as she flicks her wand , directing the teapot to fill her sister’s cup. “Although he’s taking her to dinner tomorrow, and I believe they are engaged for the Quidditch World Cup. Draco has offered her a place in the Ministry box.”  
  
“Excellent,” Bella fairly beams at her younger sister. “That’s not for a few months, yet, so if he’s thinking that far ahead, he must be quite taken with her.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Narcissa murmurs, reaching for her own teacup. Bella’s attention to Draco’s affairs makes her somewhat uneasy, though not nearly as uneasy as the news that the Dark Lord, himself, is taking an interest. “Of course, it’s too soon to tell if anything will come of it, but no matter. They are both very young. There’s plenty of time for Draco to find a witch to settle down with.”  
  
“Nonsense,” Bella says crisply. “The boy has a duty to his family and his country. It’s high time he found himself the right sort of witch to marry. Our lord was delighted that Draco seems to have come to his senses in that regard.”   
  
“Whatever do you mean?” Narcissa says with an admirable show of calm as her stomach roils uneasily.  
  
“Oh, Cissy look around you!” Bella says impatiently. “We’ve won the war, but we suffered tremendous losses and there are still far too many blood traitors in our midst. Every day seems to bring word of a new betrayal, and the reeducation camps are as full as they can hold. Wizarding society needs to be rebuilt, and it is the duty of every loyal pure-blood to contribute to that rebuilding. Draco’s position at our lord’s side makes him a particular example to his peers. If anyone should be marrying and setting up his nursery, it is your son.”  
  
“Well, of course we want Draco to do his duty in continuing the family line. Lucius broached the matter with him last night,” Narcissa says carefully, omitting the information that Lucius’ views were somewhat more long-term than the one Bella--and most disturbingly, the Dark Lord--seems to be taking.  
  
“And high time he did so,” Bella sniffs. “You see, Cissy, even your husband understands what must be done. Though I must say I am disappointed that he needed to recall Draco to a sense of proper duty. The boy ought to have realized how matters stood on his own. It’s not as if he hasn’t had ample opportunity to make a good match. Really, it was too bad of him to treat that lovely Parkinson child so shabbily. You might have been a grandmother by now if he’d had the sense to use a little discretion with the witches he was bedding.”  
  
“I suppose I might, at that,” Narcissa agrees. She has no immediate ambitions in that regard, but that does not seem a safe thing to say. Not if Voldemort’s ambitions are different. She is fairly certain her son is not interested in settling down with one witch when so many witches are offering him varied, if temporary, attentions. The idea of her son marrying one woman while continuing to carry on with as many others as he pleases is not one she can like. She would never have tolerated such behavior from Lucius, and would find it deplorable in her son. Certainly she would not wish that sort of husband on any future daughter-in-law. But she knows what men are, and has simply turned a blind eye to her son’s indiscretions, waiting for him to get it all out of his system so that he can settle down properly, and make some lucky young witch a good and faithful husband. She might have hoped, at one point, that Pansy Parkinson would also wait, but can hardly blame her for declining to do so. Bella is right. Draco’s treatment of the poor girl was, indeed, shabby. He should have kept his affairs quiet instead of seeming to flaunt them, and he most certainly ought to have made Pansy a proper offer. Had he made his intentions official, she might have been content with a long engagement while Draco was  _sowing his wild oats_. But no one could fault Pansy for refusing to allow herself to be kept dangling while he did so. Narcissa could only hope that Draco’s interest in Abysinthia meant he was preparing to curtail his excesses.   
  
A fleeting thought crosses her mind about one particular excess she is frighteningly certain that Draco has no intention of ever giving up.  
  
Narcissa is not a fool. Two years earlier, she had understood more of Draco’s determination to be given the Granger girl as a prize of war than Lucius likely realized she had, and certainly more than her son suspects. Aside from one attempt to persuade Draco to give up the girl to Voldemort, the morning after that appalling display at court, she has said nothing, because there is nothing she  _can_  say. And because it would be too dangerous to say anything, at all.  
  
She had seen them all, that night, the gathered Death Eaters, the members of Voldemort’s newly established court. She had seen their avidity at the show her son was providing for them, the spectacular torture, the depraved brutality of it, the flagrant sadism.  
  
It had fooled the entire court, as well it should. But it could not fool her, not his own mother. Draco might be a warrior, he might be able to deal death as needed, and he was not above taking pleasure in the pain of his enemies. But the sort of brutality so casually flaunted that evening? No. Her son could never be such a savage. Which means that the entire torture was a carefully staged sham. There was no reason for that. Except one.  
  
Narcissa is certain that the Mudblood locked in the dungeons of Dragon Keep is being held in far more comfortable circumstances than anyone, save herself and most likely Lucius, will ever suspect, and that Draco keeps her as his mistress, rather than his prisoner. His determination to move into a separate establishment when the manor was large enough to afford him his own wing, as Lucius had enjoyed during Abraxas Malfoy’s lifetime, was one clue. The public nature of his indiscretions was another. Why subject Pansy to such humiliation, if not to create the illusion of a man who was very much  _not_  in need of the sexual services of his prisoner? Even his attentions to Abysinthia seem, to Narcissa, all of a piece with that. Pretty she might be, but the child is deadly dull, and Narcissa  _knows_  her son has no interest in taking a dullard to his bed. By the time he was eleven, it was clear to her that however much he appreciates having male companions who can’t think for themselves and perforce look to him for direction in all things, he needs more of a challenge from the witches with whom he associates.  
  
And the Granger girl, with her reputation for brilliance and her ability to beat Draco out for top grades, year in and year out, would have been quite the challenge, wouldn’t she?  
  
Narcissa allows herself a fleeting moment of pity for the unfortunate creature. Draco cannot protect her forever, if protecting her is indeed what he is doing. Her doom is certain, is inevitable, and, while Narcissa firmly believes that Muggle-borns should not intrude on the wizarding world and have no place here, even she admits that the girl’s death will be a pity and a waste.  
  
Not as much a waste as Draco’s life will be if he disappoints their lord. As he might if the Dark Lord wants him to ally himself with Abysinthia but the match fails to go forward.  
  
Narcissa doesn’t really think the two will suit in the long term, though, and decides that a careful word to that effect is best said, now. It will not do for Lord Voldemort to set his hopes on a Malfoy-Langbrey match only to have those hopes dashed. Surely there is a more suitable witch to be found. Narcissa just needs a little time to find her.  
  
“I’m not convinced Abysinthia is the right sort of girl for my son, though,” she tells her sister. “Very pretty, of course, and her bloodlines are all one could wish. Still, Draco is a very intelligent young man, and I don’t think a girl whose sole topic of conversation is Quidditch can hold his interest for long.”  
  
“She doesn’t need to hold his interest above an hour, from time to time,” Bella smirks. “And she’s more than pretty enough to hold it in the right direction.”  
  
Narcissa’s already roiled stomach roils further, and she takes another sip of tea in the hopes of settling it.  
  
“Malfoy wives are required to do a fair bit more than serve as breeding stock,” she says primly. “I doubt the child is up to the task of sitting on the various charity committees she will need to join, and as to heading any of them up, well, unless we wish to see all our fundraising events center around nothing but amateur sports meets, I doubt she’ll do us any credit there, either.”  
  
“Oh, honestly, Cissy! Is that all you can think of? The girl’s ability to throw the right sort of banquet?” Bella scoffs. “There’s more at stake here than that, I assure you! The Langbreys are healthy stock, and the girl is entirely capable of fulfilling her dynastic duties.”  
  
“How can you possibly know that, for certain?” Narcissa frowns. She is well aware that many pure-blood witches have difficulty conceiving and even more difficulty carrying to term. Their own mother had more miscarriages than live births, while she and from all accounts, Andromeda, managed only one living child each. Bella’s lack of offspring had been a matter of choice, but Narcissa believes her sister would have endured similar difficulties had she ever attempted to start a family.  
  
“When he saw her with Draco, the Dark Lord cast a spell to determine her fertility,” Bella says casually, as if this shocking liberty is the merest commonplace. “He was quite pleased to learn that she’s perfectly healthy, and there’s no reason she can’t give Draco a dozen sons. Frankly, the sooner she gets started, the better off we shall all be.”  
  
“I see,” Narcissa says, keeping up her facade of calm attention with great effort. The Dark Lord’s interest is too keen. She will have to warn Draco. Better he break things off with the girl at once, abandoning the planned dinner and the World Cup date, so that the Dark Lord does not build up expectations that it will anger him to have disappointed.  
  
No one, not even the Malfoys, dare disappoint the Dark Lord.  
  
Narcissa mentally reviews the list of every pure-blood witch between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five who is not already attached. She is unsettled to realize just how short that list has grown, and not because the witches are all spoken for. An alarming number of girls are currently undergoing reeducation. A shocking number proved too treacherous even for reeducation, and have been executed. If Voldemort is as eager for Draco to marry as Bella’s words make it seem, then Draco must ally himself with a suitable girl at once.  
  
And, in the meantime, Voldemort’s expectations must be tempered.  
  
“I haven’t entirely given up hope of Draco’s reconciling with Pansy, you know,” Narcissa lies desperately.  
  
“Really?” Bella says, arched brow indicating her skepticism.  
  
“Well, it’s not as if she ever really got over my son,” Narcissa points out. “Taking up with one of his best friends not a week after they broke up, and that barely lasted two months.”  
  
“Yes, but she’s with that Quidditch player now,” Bella reminds her. “Draco has quite missed his chance.”  
  
“No,” Narcissa says, delighted to have something to offer, here. “He wasn’t with her at court last night, hadn’t you noticed? I had it from Ivy Parkinson that her daughter had broken things off last week. Something about him getting involved in too many wizards’ duels.”  
  
“She doesn’t find the new fashion...dashing?” Bella inquires, a small smile playing about her lips, telling Narcissa that her sister’s opinions are quite different than Pansy’s on the subject.  
  
“The fashion of young wizards challenging each other to wizard duels over the least ridiculous pretext, and sometimes risking their idiotic necks into the bargain? It would appear she has better sense,” she says dampingly. “At all odds, I think Pansy will be amenable to a reconciliation. Of course Draco will have to grovel, but I dare say that’s all to the good.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Bella says uncertainly. “But he’ll need to do so quickly. Matters are becoming critical. Our population is at a dangerous low. We must  _all_  do our duty to raise it.”  
  
“Of course,” Narcissa agrees, relieved that Bella is not particular about Draco’s choice of bride, so long as he does choose one, and soon.  
  
“ _All_  of us, Cissy,” Bella repeats meaningfully. Narcissa frowns, not quite sure what meaning her sister is trying to convey. Bella does not leave her in doubt for long. “Rodophus and I are certainly attempting to do so.” Narcissa stares at her sister in shock.  
  
“You and Rodolphus...?” she manages.  
  
“Yes, we’re trying to do our duty,” Bella says proudly. “I had an appointment with St. Mungo’s this morning, to discuss the proper precautions. At my age, one doesn’t like to take chances. And a first pregnancy is a bit more problematic for a witch who is fifty than, say, a second pregnancy for a witch in her forties,” she continues suggestively. Narcissa has no doubt about her sister’s meaning, this time. She feels as if she has taken a Bludger to the chest.  
  
“It wouldn’t be my second,” she says quietly, setting down her cup of tea. “Did you think I didn’t want to give Lucius more children? I miscarried three times while you were in Azkaban.”  
  
“Oh, Cissy!” Bella says in shock. “I had no idea!”  
  
“There was no need to burden you with my troubles while you were bearing up under you own burdens in that terrible place,” Narcissa says quietly, “but I was very ill, the last time. My Healers advised me that another attempt might prove fatal.”  
  
“Oh, my dear,” Bella says, leaning forward to pat her sister’s hand sympathetically. “I am so sorry I was not here to support you through such an awful time. When was this?”  
  
“The first time was two years after Draco was born, then again three years later. We stopped trying, after that, but, unless one uses the permanent contraceptive spells, these things are never certain. The last time was twelve years ago.”  
  
“And you used one of the permanent spells, after that?” Bella asks.   
  
“I wanted to use the  _Non-Fructus_  but Lucius wouldn’t let me,” Narcissa admits, picking up her tea again. “He said it was more like a curse than a proper contraceptive spell, and didn’t want me subjected to it. He uses one of the long-term charms for wizards, something he need only cast once a year.”  
  
“Those are easy enough to reverse,” Bella says thoughtfully. “And there have been tremendous advances in healing over the past twelve years, particularly in the area of fertility. The Healers at St. Mungo’s were quite confident on that point.”  
  
“Were they?” Narcissa says noncommittally. No matter what miracles modern Healers can perform, she has a number of misgivings about Bella’s plans for motherhood. Bella has never shown the least maternal instinct. Narcissa remembers a conversation nearly thirty years past, when her sister declared herself completely uninterested in  _squeezing out a red-faced, squalling brat_  and relieved to have found herself a wizard who was similarly happy to leave any dynastic duties to his brother. This sudden decision to set up her nursery seems more about Bella’s blind devotion to the Dark Lord, and her determination to do anything to make him happy, no matter the cost to herself, than any late-blooming desire for motherhood. And that seems so very wrong to Narcissa, who believes that, dynastic duties aside, children ought to be conceived in love, and for their own sake, not the sake of a political agenda.  
  
Bella does not appear to notice her sister’s growing unease as she chatters on about advances in caring for witches undergoing  _elderly primigravida,_  the newest treatments for infertility, and some exciting breakthroughs in healing that ensure an older witch’s eggs are free of defect before conception, thereby minimizing the chance of complications.   
  
“I couldn’t be happier with what I learned at St. Mungo’s,” Bella smiles, patting her sister’s hand again. “I think you should make an appointment, right away. I’m sure you’ll get much better news today than you did twelve years ago.”  
  
“Better news?” Narcissa asks slowly.  
  
“Of course, my love. You said, yourself, that you wanted to give Lucius more children. I know that this is exactly what our lord desires. And, of course, with our population so low, and the need for more witches and wizards of proven loyalty, such as ourselves, I know that he’ll give you every possible support in achieving your goal.” By which she means, Narcissa realizes, that Voldemort will be only too happy to use his formidable magical power to himself cast any fertility spells that might be required to ensure that the Malfoys do their part to repopulate the wizarding world.  
  
Such interference in deeply personal matters is utterly abhorrent to Narcissa. Yes, she wanted more children. Years ago. Today, just the thought of everything involved in taking care of a new infant exhausts her, and she has no desire to find herself pregnant at this point in her life. Given the service she and her entire family have given their lord--and despite how well matters turned out, she has never quite forgiven Voldemort for his demands on Draco in his sixth year at Hogwarts--she resents deeply that yet more is being demanded, particularly something so intimate and private. She takes another sip of tea to cover her anger, anger it would be dangerous to show. When she can trust herself to speak calmly, she says, “I had not realized matters had become so grave. I’ll make an appointment with my Healer.”  
  
“Excellent,” Bella beams at her. “Just think. By this time next year, we might each of us have a new additions in our nurseries, and your son might be preparing for an addition of his own.” Narcissa, who finds this idea perfectly appalling, manages to smile and say something agreeable, while mentally cataloging every undetectable curse for barrenness she ever heard of, and every source in the extensive Malfoy library where she might learn more. She is determined that St. Mungo’s Healers will find nothing in the advances of the past twelve years to help her conceive. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  
  
Abysinthia Langbrey is not taking tea. She is alone in her bedroom, staring in dread at a silver salver a house-elf has placed on her night stand. Upon the salver rests the inspiration of her terror, a single buff-colored envelope bearing what has become a rather famous and instantly recognizable crest pressed into a seal of green wax. The envelope had been delivered by owl, and accepted by the house-elf who will quite naturally inform her parents of its delivery. Her parents will, equally naturally, want to know every detail about the envelope’s contents. Or, at least her mother will. Mr. Langbrey will simply be pleased that the envelope came, and leave it to Mrs. Langbrey to make sure all is as it should be and that events proceed smoothly toward the desired end.  
  
This is the last thing Abysinthia wants, but at least she has a bit of a respite, until her mother returns home, probably in little more than an hour’s time. She has a few minutes grace, then, before she must familiarize herself with the contents of the envelope, and prepare what she will say to convince her parents that she is thrilled to have received it.  
  
She isn’t.  
  
Receiving anything from Lord Death is quite the last thing she wants in the world. She would be distraught to know that his interest in her has caused Pansy Parkinson any sort of pangs, whatsoever, and greatly relieved that Narcissa Malfoy does not want her as a daughter-in-law.  
  
The truth is, her parents’ ambitions are not her own. A greater truth: so far from wanting to attract Draco Malfoy’s attentions, she desperately wishes he had never heard of her. A timid witch, she has never gone against her parents’ desires, her greatest fear being that she will somehow disappoint them. She has obediently absorbed everything her mother has tried to teach her about becoming a suitable mate for a pure-blood wizard. Wizards enjoy Quidditch, so she has studied it diligently in order to entertain them. They like their witches to be attractive and well dressed, so she peruses the fashion magazines and strives to be  _au courant_. They feel intimidated by a witch who is too clever, so she never raised her hand in class, and even deliberately answered a few questions wrong on her N.E.W.T.s so as to receive mainly Acceptables and one or two Exceeds Expectations. Except in History of Magic. She simply couldn’t bring herself to answer anything incorrectly in her favorite subject, so there was no avoiding the Outstanding she received there. Thankfully, the single grade of O did nothing to give her a reputation as a swot, which she is sure her parents would have deplored. The only thing they want her to excel at is arranging dinner parties, directing house-elves in their duties, and maintaining the estate of whatever pure-blood wizard she eventually marries, preferably an estate of more than moderate size.  
  
Dragon Keep, being a castle, albeit a relatively small one, is nevertheless lavish, and exactly the sort of estate that the Langbreys hope their daughter will be asked to manage. The prospect of her eventually taking the reins at Malfoy Manor, one of the premier estates of wizarding Britain, is one that fills them with joy. It fills Abysinthia with revulsion, for the simple reason that in order to become mistress of those properties, she would have marry one of the most terrifying men in the world, a man she cannot think of as Draco Malfoy, but only as Voldemort’s merciless executioner, Lord Death.   
  
When her parents had excitedly informed her that they were dining with the Malfoys, that Lord Lucius Malfoy had specifically sought them out, Abysinthia greeted the news with a show of pleasure she did not feel. Refusal was out of the question, and none of the schemes that suggested themselves to her for avoiding the engagement seemed at all workable. If she claimed illness, her mother would simply pour Pepper-up Potion down her throat so that she had enough energy to attend, while if she said she had another engagement, she would be ordered to break it. Abysinthia did consider allowing herself to fall down a flight of stairs in hopes of breaking her leg, but a Healer could fix broken bones in a matter of moments, so there hardly seemed to be any point. In the end, she had been reduced to picking out her strongest-smelling perfume and applying it a little too liberally, praying that Lord Death would be put off and decide to keep his distance.   
  
But if Abysinthia found it difficult to breath when surrounded by such a strong floral stench, Lord Death had no such difficulty. When they were introduced, his cold gray eyes raked over her in the most calculating way, he’d given her a predatory smile, then proceeded to engage her in conversation. She’d babbled on about Quidditch, deliberately praising the team that was the fiercest rival of the one he was known to favor. He didn’t seem to care. Her heart nearly failed her when he invited her to watch the World Cup from the Ministry’s box. That was months away, and it was terrifying to think he meant to keep up their acquaintance that long. So she’d switched gears, running on and on about shopping, the clothes she was buying, and the jewels she liked, hoping desperately that Lord Death would decide she was simply a gold-digging harpy who was after his fortune and title and therefore not someone with whom he wanted to associate. Seemingly, he didn’t care about the mercenary tendencies she displayed any more than he cared about which team she claimed to support, as he did nothing more than recommend an exclusive modiste whose shop he thought she might like to visit the next time she wanted new robes, and suggest that a particular goldsmith in Diagon Alley could always be counted on to design unique and exquisite jewelry to compliment any robe. She almost wept when he asked her to join him for dinner the evening after next. She would have to go. Her parents would be over the moon, and there was no way they would let her cry off.  
  
And then she would be alone with him, with Lord Death, a cold-blooded murderer who hunted down those who opposed Lord Voldemort and who killed them, out of hand, rather than capturing them and turning them over for trial. She would dine  _tête-à-tête_  with a man who notoriously kept a Muggle-born prisoner to torture, who had demonstrated the most inventive and sadistic torments upon the wretched girl in front of the entire court when he was barely eighteen, the age at which any other boy would have been showing off his latest moves on his racing broom.  
  
She could not believe that such a man had any of the tender feelings. She knew, of course, about all the witches with whom he had affairs. Everyone knew about it, gossiped about it behind their hands, whispered about it behind closed doors, read hints about it in the society columns. The gossip would have it that the witches pursued him because he was some sort of sex-god, dedicated to the pleasure of his partners, and that this, coupled with his good looks, vast fortune and his seemingly unassailable position as Voldemort’s favorite made him irresistible. Naturally, each witch hoped that she could keep him happy enough in bed to persuade him to make the relationship permanent. All of them were determined to become Lady Draco Malfoy.  
  
Abysinthia thought any witches who pursued him on those grounds were utter fools. Of course he must eventually take a wife to ensure the continuation of his line, but he would not love her. No one who could do what he had done to that pitiable Muggle could possible know anything about love or tenderness. His reputed skills in the bedchamber do not impress her. She is certain that skill is no substitute for genuine affection. She cannot deny that he is handsome, but his good looks leave her unaffected. There are many savage beasts and birds of prey which are also handsome creatures, and she would as soon bed down with man-eating tiger than with Lord Death. She can find nothing attractive in someone so cold and vicious. As for his status and wealth, pursing him on that account is the greatest folly of all. Lord Voldemort demands abject and absolute loyalty of his subjects, but is utterly faithless, himself. He has been known to torment even Bellatrix Lestrange with the Cruciatus when she displeases him. Abysinthia cannot help but think that eventually, Voldemort will turn on Lord Death, as well. And then what will his famous estates and his bottomless vaults at Gringotts matter? He will be destroyed, annihilated, any witch fool enough to tie herself to him destroyed as well.   
  
Abysinthia has learned a great deal from the histories she so loves to study. If she were given her choice, researching and writing about them would be how she would choose to sped her life. She knows about tyrants and she knows what happens to those to whom they show favor.  
  
She also knows the futility of trying to stop the tide of history.  
  
She has spent too much time in useless speculation. Her mother will be home in a quarter of an hour, now. Steeling herself, Abysinthia lifts the buff envelope from the salver, and with a little silver knife, neatly slices open the seal, removing the sheet of parchment. It is no worse than she expected. Lord Death will be picking her up at seven o’clock the next night to take her to the most fashionable restaurant in wizarding London.  
  
Abysinthia wonders if she ought to try to brew herself a cup of hemlock, first.


End file.
